


The Wolf Doesn't Lose Sleep Over the Bleating of Sheep

by Chelonie



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Don't copy to other sites, Eugenics, Fidelius Charms, Gen, Independent Harry Potter, Independent Hermione Granger, Remus Lupin needs therapy, Werewolf Harry Potter, Werewolf Hermione Granger, Werewolf Turning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21972532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chelonie/pseuds/Chelonie
Summary: The night that Harry and Hermione used her Time Turner to rescue Sirius Black, everything went wrong. Instead of Sirius flying a hippogriff to freedom, Harry and Hermione were bitten by Remus Lupin.
Relationships: Hermione Granger & Harry Potter
Comments: 138
Kudos: 399
Collections: The Witch's Woods





	1. Moony is Happy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus wakes up in the woods, with two injured students. Oh fuck.

**Mon 26 Jun 1994  
** **Waning Gibbous Moon  
Hogwarts, Summer Break**

Remus Lupin was packing up his office when Harry Potter appeared in his door. 

"Harry!" he said brightly. But Harry was clearly not happy to see him. If he had to guess Harry's mood, he would say 'quietly furious'. 

"Mr Lupin," Harry said. 

"So you know I've resigned."

Harry shrugged. "It makes sense. You were out on the grounds, weren't you? That's pretty unsafe behaviour."

Remus winced. It was true, and it could have been so much worse. "Yes. It was. Why are you here, Harry?"

"Two things. First, I'd like my father's map back, now that you're no longer my teacher." He didn't ask, simply demanded, as if he was the ranking person here. Remus handed it over without a word. "Second, I need you to take a walk with me."

" _Need_?"

"Hermione has something to say to you."

Remus realised he was getting nothing more than that. So he simply said, "Lead the way."

As Harry led him through the Castle, Remus tried to chat, "You seem to be recovering well from the Romping Rubella and the thestral wounds, to be out of bed." 

"I suppose," Harry said. 

Then after a moment, "This isn't the way to the Isolation Ward. Where is Hermione?"

Harry went straight through the Entrance Hall and out the front doors without answering. Clearly Hermione was on the grounds.

They walked without speaking, through the grounds, down the hill, and around the lake-shore to the noisy stream. Hermione was sitting on a boulder with her wounded foot propped up on a transfigured cushion. Her crutches were on the ground nearby. Both children had been savaged by thestrals the other night while trying to escape him, and those wounds were slow to heal.

Harry sat down next to Hermione, and Remus transfigured a bench and sat as well. Harry started.

"Do you remember the failed ritual we did yesterday with Dumbledore?" Harry said.

"Professor Dumbledore, Harry," Remus said automatically.

"It didn't fail. It was a Fidelius, and Hermione is the Secret Keeper," Harry said.

Remus's eyes opened wide. "You lied to Professor Dumbledore?"

"It's _our_ Secret, and we _don't_ want him to know," Hermione spat. "We wouldn't tell you either, but we need at least one adult."

Remus shook his head. "I don't know what you two are up to, but I'm not participating in a conspiracy against Albus Dumbledore."

Harry stood up and grabbed Remus by the front of his shirt, with surprising strength, and pulled him down to his knees in front of Hermione. He was so shocked by the sudden move (and still in pain from his transformation a couple of days ago) that he found her gripping him by the chin and the back of the neck, and pulling him close enough to whisper in his ear before he could resist. The words shook the foundations of his world.

"No..." he gasped. His memories from the last few days came into startling clarity, as Moony laughed and laughed in his head.

* * *

**Thur 23 Jun 1994  
** **Full Moon  
Hogwarts, Last Week of Term**

> _"Listen to me, Harry. It is too late, you understand me? You must see that Professor Snape's version of events is far more convincing than yours."_
> 
> _"_ _He hates Sirius," Hermione said desperately. "All because of some "stupid trick Sirius played on him —"_
> 
> _"_ _Sirius has not acted like an innocent man. The attack on the Fat Lady — entering Gryffindor Tower with a knife — without Pettigrew, alive or dead, we have no chance of overturning Sirius's sentence."_
> 
> _"_ _But you believe us."_
> 
> _"_ _Yes, I do," said Dumbledore quietly. "But I have no power to make other men see the truth, or to overrule the Minister of Magic. …"_
> 
> _Harry stared up into the grave face and felt as though the ground beneath him were falling sharply away. He had grown used to the idea that Dumbledore could solve anything. He had expected Dumbledore to pull some amazing solution out of the air. But no … their last hope was gone._
> 
> _"_ _What we need," said Dumbledore slowly, and his light blue eyes moved from Harry to Hermione, "is more time."_
> 
> _"_ _But —" Hermione began. And then her eyes became very round. "OH!"_
> 
> _"_ _Now, pay attention," said Dumbledore, speaking very low, and very clearly. "Sirius is locked in Professor Flitwick's office on the seventh floor. Thirteenth window from the right of the West Tower. If all goes well, you will be able to save more than one innocent life tonight. But remember this, both of you: you must not be seen. Miss Granger, you know the law — you know what is at stake. … You — must — not — be — seen."_
> 
> _Harry didn't have a clue what was going on. Dumbledore had turned on his heel and looked back as he reached the door. "I am going to lock you in. It is —" he consulted his watch, "five minutes to midnight. Miss Granger, three turns should do it. Good luck."_
> 
> _(Excerpt From Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)_

Dumbledore left the Hospital Wing, half expecting to see Harry and Miss Granger running up to him as they caught up with themselves in the timestream. When he didn’t, he was slightly concerned, but not very much. Harry Potter had proven himself very resourceful in the past three years, and with Miss Granger by his side, he was sure to succeed. 

He made his way through the castle, to the room where Sirius Black was no doubt no longer being held. 

That’s where his plans came to a stuttering halt. Because when he opened the door with a flourish, Sirius Black was still there, just as before. There was no sign that two time-displaced teenagers had ever been.

“Of course you will not be taking him with you,” Dumbledore stated. He was thinking fast, but it would be necessary to go back to his first plan, the one that he had rejected in favour of allowing Harry and Miss Granger to save Black. It would provide more live training for the two teens as well as saving the political capital he’d have to expend on saving Black through the legal process. 

“What?!” Snape demanded. “He’s a murderer! He should be taken to the Dementors at once!”

“In my capacity as Chief Warlock, I am rescinding the Kiss-On-Sight Order until a proper trial is held.”

“Dumbledore!” Fudge exclaimed. “You can’t possibly believe that Black was condemned to Azkaban without a trial! The very notion!”

“If you have the trial transcripts available…”

“I don’t keep them on my person!”

Black spoke up for the first time, with a snort. “There was never a trial, Cornelius. Crouch threw quite a few of us into Azkaban and forgot about us.”

Snape slashed his wand through the air, causing the door to slam shut again, leaving Black alone in his makeshift prison. “Albus, you can’t possibly mean to help that criminal!”

“If a fair trial shows that he is indeed guilty, then I will not interfere further.”

“It’s a bloody waste of time!” Snape snarled. But he stormed off, in a swirl of robes, and eventually, Fudge was talked around as well.

The minutiae of how to get Black safely into a Ministry cell without him being Kissed by a Dementor or Cursed by an Auror took up the rest of the night, and Dumbledore had completely forgotten about the two wayward teenagers that he had sent out onto the Dementor strewn grounds, on the night of a full moon.

Until a Patronus arrived the next morning: _Albus, I’m in the Forest with two wounded. Please help and be discreet._

A sick sense of dread filled Dumbledore. He’d forgotten the children.

He’d _forgotten_ the _children._

* * *

**Fri 24 Jun 1994  
** **Waning Gibbous Moon  
Hogwarts, Last Day of Term**

Remus knew something was wrong as his transformation returned him to human. He was outdoors. _Wrong._ His mind was fuzzy, not clear as it had been during his transformations all year. _Wrong._

Moony was _happy._ More than happy. _Overjoyed._

_Wrong wrong wrong wrong._

Whenever the full moon set, Moony was sulky and displeased. Remus knew from talking to other werewolves that if he accepted the Wolf instead of fighting it, the Wolf wouldn’t resent letting him transform back to human. But last night, something had happened that made his Wolf feel elated.

Then he heard whimpering sounds, and his worst fear came crashing down on him. He’d attacked someone.

 _Pack build pack have cub ~~s~~ … _was the happy refrain he could now pick out coming from Moony.

He opened his eyes and looked around. He could see torn robes.

_No no no..._

“Professor?” a voice called said weakly. “Is it you? Are you safe?” It was Harry Potter. He was in a tree.

“I’m rational,” Remus said bitterly. “Whether I’m safe… I bit you?”

“Me and Hermione both," Harry said.

 _Fuck fuck fuck, I bit **two** students. I bit the son of my best friends _ **_and_ ** _my favourite student._

Moony said sleepily: _Yes, strong pack. Good._

 _Fuck you, Moony!_ Remus said, and with an effort, he shoved the Wolf back into the cage it lived in most of the month.

“Harry, may I borrow your wand to summon help?” Remus asked.

A voice came from the tree. “Not yet Harry. Professor, tell me what spell you will be casting,” Hermione said icily.

“The Patronus. It can be used as a messenger,” Remus said.

“You’ll cast one spell, then you’ll return Harry’s wand to him,” Hermione said.

Remus didn’t even try to negotiate for the right to transfigure clothing. They had every reason to mistrust him. “Agreed.”

Harry tossed his wand over, and Remus sent the Patronus, then Hermione immediately summoned the wand off of him.

“Do you know… can you tell me… what happened to everyone else? Did I bite anyone else?” _Did anyone die?_

Harry wasn’t inclined to talk, but Hermione did. “Ron and Professor Snape made it back to the castle. Pettigrew escaped. Sirius Black… we were trying to rescue him. We had a plan to fly a hippogriff…” 

“He’s Kissed by now,” Harry said in a dead voice. “We failed.”

* * *

 **Fri 24 Jun 1994  
** **Waning Gibbous Moon**  
Hogwarts, Last Day of Term

Fawkes flamed Albus and Poppy into the Forbidden Forest to find Harry and Hermione in a tree, both of them holding wands on a naked, human, and unarmed Remus. 

“There is no need to hold him at wand-point. Professor Lupin will not harm you,” Dumbledore said.

“I’m no longer their Professor,” Remus said. “Albus, I know I deserve to be locked up for this. Just… let me get away from Hogwarts. I’ll do something else to get arrested - Merlin knows there are enough Werewolf laws that I can find something - so their names will stay out of it. You can send Severus with me if you don’t trust me.”

“My dear boy, there’s no need for that,” Albus said.

Poppy tried to ignore the by-play between the two men. Lupin had been her patient for decades, but these two children were the priority. She levitated the teenagers out of the tree. Both had torn robes. Harry had a bite on his left arm. Hermione’s bite was on her right foot. Both were crudely bandaged with torn fabric.

“Werewolf bites?” she asked quietly.

“Yes,” Harry said. “I almost got Hermione into the tree in time. He bit her foot as I was pushing her up. He’d already gotten me by then.”

“Then Lupin calmed down completely and just guarded the tree. He wouldn’t let either of us down, but he didn’t try to get to us. He wasn’t trying to eat us, just one bite each,” Hermione said. “All the wolf cared about was making sure we would be turned.”

The two were clinging together so tightly that Poppy conjured a single stretcher for them. “Albus, isolation tower 4? If you can prevail upon Fawkes, then we can keep their condition quiet.” 

Fawkes flew to her arm and in another burst, Madam Pomfrey, Harry and Hermione were apparated with the phoenix into a hospital room that she rarely used.

“This is the Isolation Tower, that we use for contagious illnesses or any sort of disease where separation from the student body is advised,” Madam Pomfrey said. She finally coaxed them apart enough to put them on separate beds, and took charge, treating their bites first, and then for exposure, and all the scratches and bruises they received while running through the woods.

“Oh… oh no… I can’t go home!” Hermione realised. “I can’t… my parents are muggles! Harry can’t either!” Then suddenly, frightened, “Am I going to be allowed to come back to school next year?!”

“Miss Granger - I daresay the Headmaster will work something out. But you should know that in the worst case, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang are both more accepting of students with creature blood, including werewolves.”

Hermione reached across the gap between beds and took Harry’s hand. “The Headmaster would never allow Harry to go anywhere but Hogwarts.”

Harry stared into her eyes with steel in his expression. “Let him try and stop me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dumbledore: The Ministry won't listen to two teenage wizards.  
> Dumbledore: Of course they would listen to _me_ , but I can't be bothered to stir myself.  
> Dumbledore: So instead, I will send you back out onto the grounds with a werewolf and swarming Dementors.  
> Dumbledore: Nothing can go wrong with this plan at all!  
> Dumbledore: I am so great!


	2. Hermione has a Secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dumbledore does damage control to prevent people learning that Harry has been bitten. Then Hermione and Harry do damage control to prevent Dumbledore from controlling them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For more on the Fidelius, see [Harry Potter head canons and how things work](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21934171/chapters/52350685) (including comments)

**Jun 24 1994  
** **Waning Gibbous Moon  
** **Hogwarts, Last Day of Term**

“I don’t see the point in keeping it a secret,” Harry said stubbornly. “Professor Lupin’s friends figured it out based on the pattern of your absences. If I tell people now, they’ll have all summer to get used to it.”

“I’m not your Professor any longer, Harry. You may call me Remus,” Lupin said.

The small group was sitting in a lounge in the Isolation Tower. Hermione suspected that Professor Dumbledore had purposefully made it look similar to the Gryffindor Common Room in colour and comfort, if smaller in scale. Lupin and Dumbledore were each sitting in their own squashy chair, while Hermione and Harry said together on a sofa. Hermione leaned back against Harry with her hurt foot propped up on a pouffe. 

“Mr Lupin then,” Harry said, almost hissing the ‘Mister’. Both teenagers were still furious at Lupin for forgetting - no _neglecting -_ his Wolfsbane the night before.

“Harry, my boy, one tool we have now that we did not have then is the option of the Fidelius Charm to hide the secret that you have been turned. Just as a location can be hidden so well that a person can be looking in the window and not see it, a secret can be hidden so that the clues can be staring a person in the face.”

“Why couldn’t you keep the secret that Mr Lupin was a werewolf that way?” Hermione asked.

“The Charm - or rather, the ritual, for it is not a charm at all - requires a certain power input based on how many people know the information you wish to hide. If I want to hide that Hermione Granger’s birthday is September 19th, that will require enough power to make her family and friends forget. If I want to hide that Harry Potter’s birthday is July 31st, I need enough power to make the whole country forget - which is out of my reach. By the time Professor Lupin began teaching here, enough people knew his secret from his travels in more accepting lands that I would not have been able to do it.”

“But what about when he was a student?” Harry asked.

“I was still studying the magics necessary to cast the Fidelius,” Dumbledore said. 

“Maybe it would be easier for us to just go to Beauxbatons,” Hermione said. Harry squeezed her shoulders in solidarity. She knew without words that he would support her, no matter what she decided.

“If that is what you wish, Miss Granger,” Dumbledore said. “Harry, of course, must remain at Hogwarts.”

“Why?” Harry asked. “I’m thinking three out of three defense professors trying to kill me is enough reason to fuck off -”

“Language, Harry!” said the two adults. Harry was warmed that Hermione, who normally would have been one of those voices, didn’t object at all.

“- not to mention the troll, the basilisk, a crazy house elf, Malfoy, dementors. All of those except the house elf have tried to kill Hermione as well. And now we’re dealing with the most repressive anti-werewolf laws in the world? Why. Should. We. Stay?”

Dumbledore looked pained, before he finally said, “Your godfather’s trial is coming up. Surely you won’t leave him.”

Harry and Hermione looked at each other, both thinking the same thing. “ _He wasn’t Kissed?_ ” Hermione hissed. “You sent us out onto the grounds, on the night of a full moon, because we were supposedly the only ones who could save him, and you had the power to swan in and save him all along?!!”

“When it appeared that you had not been able to… extricate Sirius Black, I called in some favours to get him moved to a Ministry holding cell,” Dumbledore said.

“Fine. Let’s put this information under Fidelius,” Harry snarled. “But I want Hermione to be the Secret Keeper.”

Dumbledore gave the ‘disappointed grandfather’ look over his glasses. “Harry, my boy, you are being overly emotional…”

“It really would be better for you to let Dumbledore hold the Secret,” Mr Lupin said.

“Hermione, or no one,” Harry said firmly.

* * *

* * *

**Fri 24 Jun 1994  
** **Waning Gibbous Moon  
Hogwarts, Last Day of Term**

Ron Weasley woke in the Hospital Wing, to find his sister with him. 

“Scabbers!” he said, suddenly remembering.

“I thought Scabbers was dead,” Ginny said.

“No… Scabbers is… it’s a long story. Where are Harry and Hermione?”

“Well… it turns out that Azkaban escapees aren’t very healthy. _You’re_ okay, because you’ve been vaccinated, but Harry and Hermione have both fallen ill with Romping Rubella,” Ginny said.

“Blimey! They weren’t vaccinated?” Ron said. “Wait, what happened to Sirius Black?”

“Dumbledore is getting him a trial. Can you believe he never had one?”

“Yeah, that’s what he told us,” Ron said, memories of last night in the Shrieking Shack coming back to him. “Professor Lupin was his friend.” Then, wide-eyed. “Professor Lupin is a werewolf! We have a werewolf teaching at Hogwarts!”

“Not anymore. He already resigned,” Ginny said. 

“Well that’s a relief. Imagine if he’d bitten somebody! So what’s going to happen to Harry and Hermione? They can’t go home, can they?”

“No, they have to stay at Hogwarts. They can’t risk passing Romping Rubella to the Muggles,” Ginny said. “So tell me what happened last night? All I know is that you and your friends confronted an escaped prisoner by yourselves!”

“Well… it started with Scabbers…” Ron said.

* * *

* * *

**Fri 24 Jun 1994  
** **Waning Gibbous Moon  
Hogwarts, Last Day of Term**

Later, Harry levitated Hermione’s chair over to the window so they could watch the students going to the carriages together. They saw the Weasleys in a group. 

“Is Romping Rubella a real thing?” Harry asked.

“Yes,” Hermione said. “I was vaccinated for it, about a month before Hogwarts. Weren’t you?”

“I… have no idea. Are they jabs?”

“Potions,” Hermione said. “Madam Pomfrey might have just given them to you the first time you ended up in the Hospital Wing, if she’d seen you didn’t have them yet.”

“This is my fault,” Harry said. “We were trying to save my godfather.”

Hermione shook her head. “It’s my fault. I knew it was against the Time-Turner rules. Besides, I didn’t want the dementors to get him either.”

“Was I right to be so insistent with Dumbledore?” Harry asked.

“I agree with you. If Sirius and Pettigrew aren’t a clear example of what happens if you trust the wrong person… and you’re the person I trust the most. The Secret Keeper should be one of us,” Hermione said.

“You. Because I’m a magnet for trouble.”

"Okay, me," Hermione agreed. 

Harry turned to Hermione. "Have you felt... angrier... since being bitten?"

"Not... angrier so much as more driven. More protective. Less willing to take bullshit. I mean, I used to be so reverent of Dumbledore, but he's just a foolish man, isn't he?"

"He's still got a lot of power," Harry said.

"Yeah... I've got some ideas about that. We're going to talk to Dumbledore before the Fidelius, and he's going to give us everything we want."

* * *

**Sat 25 Jun 1994  
** **Waning Gibbous Moon  
Hogwarts, Summer Break**

Dumbledore stared, aghast, at the two teenagers who were in his office. The portraits had been frozen at Hermione's request. "You can't be serious!"

"Yes, I _will_ go public if you don't do this," Harry said. "I _will_ include the fact that it's all your fault."

"If you go public, Remus will go to Azkaban!" Dumbledore said.

"He will," Hermione said. "He _should_. He bit and turned two children." 

"You can't possibly do that to him!" Dumbledore said.

Harry gestured to his arm, and Hermione's foot. "Funny, I would have thought _he_ couldn't possibly do this to _us._ And yet here we are. Cursed for life."

"You'll be publicly reviled. Harry, my boy, you have no idea -"

Harry jerked back as if slapped. " _I_ have no idea? Harry Potter the Heir of Slytherin, Harry Potter the Parselmouth, Harry Potter the Freak, Harry Potter the Ungrateful, Harry Potter the Juvenile Delinquent who his dear Aunt and Uncle take in and care for by the Goodness of their Heart and this is how he repays them - I suspect I know quite a lot more about being reviled than you do, Albus Dumbledore." He took Hermione's hand. "I swear to you, I can handle being publicly known as a werewolf better than you can handle being known as a Headmaster who sends teenagers outside when there's a werewolf on the grounds."

"Or you can just do what we ask," Hermione said.

* * *

**Sat 25 Jun 1994  
** **Waning Gibbous Moon  
Hogwarts, Summer Break**

Later, in the ritual room, Hermione and Harry both bathed in the ritual cistern, even though it was only strictly necessary for her, as the Secret Keeper. The fact that the Secret was also _about_ Harry made it desirable for him to be as ritually pure as possible. 

Harry tried not to notice how see-through the wet linen ritual robe was on Hermione as she sat cross-legged in the centre of the circle, with Dumbledore at the south point of the compass, representing fire, Harry at the east point, representing air (Hermione had chosen it for him). Madam Pomfrey sat at the north point, to represent water, and Remus Lupin at the west point, representing earth. 

The ritual itself took a long time to cast. It certainly was nothing like a _Charm._ There were lines each of them had to speak, in Latin, which he’d practised ahead of time. Lupin had assured him that intent mattered more than a mispronounced word, but Harry still worried. 

As the ritual went on, he could feel magic building in the room, like static or potion fumes or that feeling deep in the Forbidden Forest where all the trees were magical and aware. _Magic is watching us,_ he thought. There was a feeling like a hand ruffling fondly through his hair, as if Magic was saying, _It’s okay. I like you._

At the climax of the ritual, when Harry felt like the room was near exploding, Dumbledore spoke a few final words in Latin, and then “The Secret is this: Harry James Potter and Hermione Jean Granger are werewolves. So mote it be.”

“So mote it be,” the rest of the group echoed.

“Hermione Jean Granger, will you hold this Secret, only giving it to those you judge worthy to know it?”

“I will,” she said.

There were more Latin words, and then there was a bright flash of light, knocking everyone to the ground.

“What happened?” Harry asked. He was the first to sit up. He helped Hermione sit up as well. “Your foot is hurt.”

“We were trying to perform a ritual?” Hermione said in confusion. “But I don’t think it worked.”

“Are you sure?” Dumbledore said. “Don’t you think you have something to tell me?”

Hermione gave her best puzzled face. "I don't think so. I need to put dry clothes on."

“I’ll get your crutches,” Harry said. He didn't know what was going on.

Inside Hermione’s head, the Secret was pounding at her. _I have to tell Harry! He doesn’t know!_ But at the same time, _I won’t tell Dumbledore! I won’t!_ She didn’t have to tell him. In fact, the magical vow she swore wouldn’t even _let_ her tell someone she 'judged unworthy'! She was so glad that she and Harry had taken precautions.

* * *

**Sat 25 Jun 1994  
** **Waning Gibbous Moon  
Hogwarts, Summer Break**

When Dumbledore reached his office, he found a letter written in his own handwriting.

> Dear Self,
> 
> I have just performed a Fidelius ritual with HG as the Secret Keeper. By previous arrangement, the Secret will not be revealed before SB is freed. I have agreed to use all my efforts to this end.
> 
> HG and HP will leave the castle with RL, who will take on their care for this summer.
> 
> Sincerely, 
> 
> APWBD

_What? Just... what?!_ But no questioning of the ghosts, portraits, or the damnable Sorting Hat would give him the slightest hint of what the subject of the Fidelius could have been, or why he would have thought it best to hide a Secret from _himself._

* * *

**Sat 25 Jun 1994  
** **Waning Gibbous Moon  
Hogwarts, Summer Break**

Hermione didn’t trust Dumbledore not to have their room bugged, so she waited until they had changed clothes and Harry could help her outside. She let him to the boulders by the noisy stream that emptied into the lake, in hopes that if there were any bugging charms on them, they would be foiled by the noise. Then she whispered the secret in Harry’s ear.

He sat back and looked into her eyes, as his memory clarified. “I understand,” he said. “What are we going to do?”

She took out a notebook and began to write out plans. 

  * Tell only Lupin. No one else. (Maybe Pomfrey?)


  * Buy potion elsewhere, not Snape. (Learn to brew?)


  * Look into Beauxbatons or Durmstrang? 


  * See Sirius freed. (Don't trust Dumbledore to do it)


  * Find a place to spend moons.


  * Learn laws.



“I hate Lupin as much as Dumbledore right now,” Harry said.

“Yes, but we _need_ Lupin,” Hermione said.

“What about your parents?” Harry asked. “Are you going to tell them?”

Hermione bit her lip and turned away. “I don’t know how the Fidelius works on muggles. It’d be safer not to.”

“We can’t stay here,” Harry said. “Even with the letter you made Dumbledore write to himself, I don't feel safe."

“Maybe Lupin will have some ideas?”

“Looking at the list… You can write to the schools, but only being vague about their stance on creatures. We don’t want the letters to count as giving away the Secret. You’re also the best to learn the laws. Once you tell Lupin, I’ll work with him on getting the potion, finding a place, and freeing Sirius. Let’s leave Pomfrey off until we end up spending a moon here.”

Hermione added those notes to her list, and leaned against Harry. “Gringotts,” she said. “Do you know how much money you have?”

“No.”

“We need to add that to your list. If you’re buying three lots of an expensive potion every month, that will deplete it awfully fast. I need to learn to brew it. I’m sure I can. It can’t be that much more difficult than Polyjuice.”

“Hermione?” Harry said. “Worst case scenario - we run away somewhere together, okay? Live in the wild?”

“Harry James Potter, if you think I’m giving up _books_ to live in the _wild!”_ Hermione said. But she hugged him tightly. "Together."

* * *

* * *

**Mon 26 Jun 1994  
** **Waning Gibbous Moon**  
Hogwarts, Summer Break

Remus looked at the two teenagers - his cubs - still reeling from the fact that for the first time in his life, he'd bitten someone. "I really think we should tell Dumbledore," he said.

"Lucky for us, it's not your choice," Harry said. "Your choice is whether to help us or not. We need to find a place to safely transform, and a source for Wolfsbane that _isn't_ Snape, because we're _not_ telling him."

"Dumbledore would help you -"

"Mr Lupin, I understand that you feel obligated to Albus Dumbledore because he let you go to school." Hermione said. "But we feel pretty bloody angry at him, because he sent us out into danger to rescue Mr Black when he was able to do it himself."

"And we're pretty bloody angry at you too, but we aren't stupid enough to think we should be transforming for the first time without guidance, and you're the only werewolf we know," Harry said. "You think you owe Albus Dumbledore? Fuck that. _You. Owe. Us."_ With each word, he punctuated it with a twitch of his wand. 

Remus realised that both teenagers had had their wands in hand during this entire conversation.

"What do you want?" he asked, full of guilt. They were right. He had cursed them both. He owed them. 

"We want to be out of Hogwarts before our first transformation," Hermione said. "Where can we safely go?"

Remus considered, then he said, "Possibly the Pottery - it's been sealed up since Harry's grandparents died, but he should be able to unseal it."

"They actually made pottery?" Harry said.

"No, only as a hobby," Remus said. "The house is still called the Pottery. There are a few acres of land, a small orchard, a pottery furnace. There should be some safe place there, especially if you can get it warded by professionals."

"It's mine? I own it?" Harry said.

"You own the cottage at Godric's Hollow, though the latter is in the heart of a mixed muggle-magical village, so I wouldn't recommend that at all. Besides, it's still... destroyed. From that night," Remus said.

Harry stood up, and fetched Hermione's crutches. "Take us there," he said. 

"What, now?"

"Not that way, Harry. First we need to pack. Then you go out one of the secret passages. I'll get your cloak and just walk alongside Mr Lupin when he leaves after he finishes packing, since I can't crawl with this foot. You know if we leave openly we'll be questioned to death. Even with the letter," Hermione said. 

"We would," Harry said. 

"What if the Pottery is not suitable?" Remus asked.

"Then we'll stay there while we find a place that is," Harry said. 

"I don't even know if it's still standing!"

"Then we'll buy a tent!" Hermione said. "But we're not staying _here!_ "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dumbledore: "Of course I'll be happy to be your Secret Keeper."  
> Harry: "Nah."  
> Dumbledore: _Disappointed grandfather look_  
>  Hermione: "Nah."  
> Lupin: "You should really trust Dumbledore."  
> Harry and Hermione: "NAH!"


	3. Harry has a House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry discovers his family's heritage. Sirius meets his law-witch.

**Mon 26 Jun 1994**   
**Waning Gibbous Moon**   
**The Pottery**

It was a few hours before they got out of Hogwarts. The house elves had packed their trunks when they had been placed in the Isolation Tower, which saved them a lot of work. Hermione cast lightening and shrinking charms on the trunks, and Harry cast a sound-dampening spell on her footsteps and her crutches. She told Crookshanks to go with Harry, and to his amazement, the cat did. He told Hedwig to find him after he left, and Hedwig seemed to be confident that she could.

Harry went out the secret exit to the Honeyduke's cellar, and took the chance to stock up on chocolate. The dementors had been sent back to Azkaban, but their effects lingered. He walked to the Shrieking Shack, where he was to meet Remus, and after a few minutes, there was a crack of apparition. 

"I took Hermione directly there. I didn't want her to spend any more time on that foot than needed," Remus said. "Take my arm, and it helps if you exhale just before I go."

Harry scooped up the cat, took Remus's arm, and experienced an awful squeezing sensation. He came to and gasped for breath. "That was horrible!"

"Everyone hates Side-Along Apparition," Remus said. "It's not quite as wretched when you're apparating yourself. Though it's never great."

Hermione was sitting on a bench, next to a small post with a small ceramic sign that simply read, "The Pottery." There was nothing else to be seen - no house, no orchard - just a packed gravel road with grass on one side and forest on the other. "So, nothing's left?" Harry asked.

"Put a drop of blood on the post," Remus said. "We'll see."

Harry was about to use his wand to cast a cutting charm, then remembered that Underage Magic Restriction applied now. He wasn't about to let Lupin aim a wand at him. _I should carry a knife,_ he thought. He bent down and chose a piece of gravel that looked sharp, and pressed it into the heel of his hand until it broke the skin. Then he smeared the blood on the words. The sign was glazed, but somehow it seemed to soak in the blood. There was a shimmer in the forested side of the road. The trees parted like a curtain to display a two story house that was a bit sprawling, almost to the point of being overwhelmingly large.

"It's not as big as it looks," Remus says, as if he could see what Harry was thinking. "There's a large inner courtyard."

"Let's go," Harry said. 

"You'll need to enter first, then invite us in," Remus said. "Later, I can show you how to add people to the wards if you want to give them permanent access."

 _Hermione gets permanent access,_ Harry thought. He still wasn't sure about Remus. 

When they went in, they found the house in perfect condition - as if a family had been living there and had just stepped out. There was not a speck of dust. The only thing that gave it the air of abandonment was the sleeping portraits. 

"How is it so clean?" Hermione asked.

"There were two Potter house-elves," Remus said. "They must have prepared it for stasis. I know Jamie didn't do this. He was in a bad place - his parents had both died of dragon pox, and he'd been separated from Lily while he was recovering from his own case of it. She was pregnant with you by then. All he wanted was to put the memories behind him."

"We had house-elves?" Harry asked. "What happened to them?"

Remus shook his head. "I don't know. After there were no Potters but you... I don't know. Perhaps they went to Hogwarts. Or there are rumours of an elf sanctuary, for displaced elves. But they would have been able to take care of themselves. You don't have to worry about them."

Harry put it on his mental list of _'things to worry about'_ , because if there were Potter house-elves, then they were damn well his responsibility.

"First things first," he said, "Is there a library, and if so, Hermione gets the closest room to it."

The smile that lit up Hermione's face was the first that he'd seen since this ordeal had started. He wanted to keep that smile on her face.

* * *

There _was_ a library. It was no Hogwarts library, but it was lovely and well catalogued, and some of the books were really really old. The closest bedroom to the library was the Master's suite, which made Hermione immediately say it should be Harry's. But he said he'd take the Heir's suite, where James and Lily Potter had lived for the first few months of their marriage. There were signs of personalisation all throughout the rooms - a small bookshelf by Lily's side of the bed, Quidditch magazines tucked into the nightstand on James' side, little bits of pottery throughout the rooms that James had made for Lily. Remus was able to tell him which pieces of furniture Lily had picked out and which had belonged to the house already. 

After unshrinking his trunk, Harry noticed that Remus was standing and watching him.

"You haven't said if you want me to stay," Remus said.

"Are you loyal to us, or Dumbledore?" Harry said. 

"Harry..." Remus said, sounding agonised.

"That's what it comes down to in the end. You made us what we are now. You cursed us. Are you part of our pack? Or are you part of Dumbledore's pack?"

"Why can't it be both?"

"You gave Albus Dumbledore 20 years of loyalty. Give us the same, and you can revisit the decision in 20 years," Harry said, his voice hard. "Did you have a room here when my grandparents were alive?"

Remus nodded. 

"Well, go unpack," Harry said. "I'll make dinner."

"With what?" Remus asked.

Harry rolled his eyes. "I bought food in Hogsmeade. Enough for a couple of days."

* * *

Dinner was slightly burnt, because Harry's only experience using a magical kitchen was at the Burrow. No one complained. Hermione and Remus were both reading. Every so often, Hermione would burst out with questions about what to expect when they transformed. Harry was making his own notes and plans. He left them reading while he washed up, and then he walked the house. 

He understood what Remus meant about it not being as large as it looked, due to the courtyard, but it was still huge. Large enough that James and Lily felt able to make their own home within a home there. Large enough that Remus and Sirius and Pettigrew had all had rooms there (though not suites - just bedrooms). He went downstairs, and found a room that made him gasp.

It was a huge Roman bath, with mosaic tiles all over the walls of the room, as well as the wall and floor of the round pool. The pool floor depicted a wheel of fortune, with scenes all over the walls from various points in history. Harry wondered if they were from the history of the Potter family. He turned the faucet to see if it worked, and the pool began to fill. 

"Wow..." 

It seemed to be filling fast, so he turned it off, and went upstairs to tell Hermione and Remus. "I found a Roman bath! Lupin, do you think it will be a safe place to transform?"

"I'd forgotten the bath," Lupin said. "You two should soak your wounds. It helps." He turned away. Not inviting himself. 

Hermione sighed. "You as well, Lupin. You're still sore. I'm sure you can transfigure swim trunks."

Lupin levitated Hermione down the stairs after she'd changed into a modest one piece. Harry knew they'd all be getting acquainted with one another's naked bodies soon enough, but he wasn't ready for that yet, and neither was Hermione. 

The pool filled quickly, and Remus showed them where the bubble taps were, and which tap had the most soothing bubbles. 

"This makes so much sense," Hermione said after they'd been soaking for a while. "The Potter's household god must be Lady Fortuna."

"Who is that?" Harry asked.

"Oh Harry," Hermione said. "It's in 'A History of Magic'. She's the goddess of extreme luck."

"You mean gods are real?" Harry asked.

"Some people believe so," Remus said. "Others believe that Magic manifests itself in different ways, and perhaps for your family that way was in extreme good or bad luck. For another family, such as the Weasleys, it might be fertility. For the Malfoys, wealth. For the Blacks, madness and genius."

"But it's all one entity?" asked Hermione.

"That's what I believe," said Lupin. "You should learn more about it before making up your mind."

* * *

**Tues 27 Jun 1994**   
**Waning Gibbous Moon**   
**Gringotts**

The next day, Harry and Lupin left for Gringott's, while Hermione remained at home to do research in the library and write letters. Harry didn't want to do Side-Along Apparition again, but there was no way to safely wear the Invisibility Cloak in the floo system. (Apparently his father had tried on multiple occasions, and Harry was willing to accept Lupin's word for it.)

So they Apparated into the alley behind the Leaky Cauldron and made their way down Diagon Alley. Lupin passed a note across to the goblin teller from Harry, begging pardon for coming into the bank invisibly, but requesting a private conference. After much grumbling and baring of teeth, they were led to a private room where Harry removed the Cloak. 

"I need to go over my account," Harry said. "I need to take a more active role in managing my money, as well as see if I can allow Hermione Granger access to my vault."

"To your trust or family vault? No," the goblin Kulhook said. "To your personal vault? Yes."

"I have three vaults?" Harry asked.

"Yes," Kulhook said. "Trust vault, your parents set up at birth. It has your money for school. Family vault, that is everything owned by Potters. You get access at age 17. Personal vault, that is all yours, no restrictions."

"But I've never put any money in a personal vault," Harry said.

"When humans make gifts or bequests to boy-who-lived, goblins put in a personal vault for you," Kulhook said.

"Oh Merlin..." Remus said. "I remember now - when the war ended, people who'd lost their heirs were talking about leaving their estates to you. You probably own dozens of houses... All over the world."

"No. Ministry used sneaky laws to seize any land before it passed to you," Kulhook said. "But they could not seize gold. Goblins control the transfer of gold."

"Does this mean I'm rich?" Harry asked weakly.

After all of the paperwork was examined, it appeared that Harry was quite rich indeed, but any standards he could understand, even if he didn't have Malfoy levels of wealth. He also had hundreds of toys, brooms, and other gift items in his personal vault that he firmly delegated to _later._ He had a vague thought that they could be donated to a hospital or orphanage, but they could keep for now.

He gave Hermione unlimited access to his personal vault, and Remus Lupin access with a spending limit, though it was a fairly high one. He was, after all, going to be purchasing their Wolfsbane.

"One more thing. When is my Hogwarts tuition paid?" he asked.

"Thirty days before start of the school year," Kulhook replied. "You have a standing order for four more years."

"Cancel it."

"Harry!" Remus said.

"It comes out of my trust vault, right?" Harry said. "I get to say where that money goes?"

"Correct," Kulhook said.

"Cancel it. I will be completing my education elsewhere," Harry said. "Thank you for your help."

* * *

**Mon 26 Jun 1994**   
**Waning Gibbous Moon**   
**Ministry of Magic**

Law-witch Enid Jones entered the holding cell, and immediately cast a bubble charm on herself.

"SIRIUS BLACK, WHAT THE FUCK?!" she bellowed. "YOU ESCAPED FROM AZKABAN A YEAR AGO? YOU COULDN'T TAKE A DAMN BATH IN ALL THAT TIME? HOLY SHIT, ARE THOSE THE SAME ROBES YOU WERE WEARING ON THE ISLAND? YOU SPEND YOUR TIME BREAKING INTO HOGWARTS AND SLASHING UP PORTRAITS AND BED HANGINGS, BUT YOU CAN'T TAKE THE TIME TO STEAL FROM A BLOODY CLOTHESLINE? I CAN'T BELIEVE THE SUBJECT OF THE MOST INTENSIVE MANHUNT IN BRITISH HISTORY IS THIS FUCKING INEPT!"

Sirius, wisely, had chosen to wait out her rant, then said mildly, "Lovely to see you too, Enid."

Enid had been a Hufflepuff prefect who had caught Sirius and the other Marauders more than once before they had completed their Map. "Albus says you're innocent, and that you never got a trial. All that true?"

"Yup," Sirius said. "It was..."

"Story later. First, you're taking a bath."

Sirius actually whimpered.

"What's wrong?"

He looked guilty. "Remember when you found out I was an animagus and you agreed to keep it secret if..."

"... if you sneaked me into the Gryffindor dorms. I remember! I had such a crush on Gillian Glover." There was a moment of silence, as there always was when someone mentioned the name of someone who had been killed in the Blood War.

"So... anyway, I stayed sane in Azkaban by spending as much time as Padfoot as possible," Sirius said.

Enid was puzzled. Then the penny dropped. "Dogs don't like baths."

"Dogs don't like baths," Sirius agreed, with the most hangdog expression possible. "Then I nearly drowned in the North Sea. It's hydrophobia by now."

Enid sighed. "Sirius. I have two choices. Either I get a medi-wix in here to diagnose you with hydrophobia and put off your trial until they can convince you to clean yourself. And fuck, I don't know how long it takes a phobia to be treated, but it's not something that happens quickly."

"Or...?" Sirius said.

"Or I stun you and levitate you into the shower, and you wake up clean. You deal with your cleanliness issues after the trial."

Sirius waggled his eyebrows at Enid. "If I'd known you were so eager to get your hands all over my body, Enid dear..."

"Sirius, darling, you are quite a bit too much of a wizard to interest me," Enid said. "Pick your poison? Option one or two?"

"Two. I hope you're getting paid well," Sirius said. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry: So, this is an independent!Harry story?  
> Author: It was going to be mentor!Remus  
> Harry: Yeah... like I'm going to trust him...  
> Author: He didn't mean to turn you!  
> Hermione: He's not the alpha of me!  
> Harry: Me either!


	4. Enid Jones kicks arse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius gets a law-witch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A short chapter, but Sirius's trial was never going to be a huge plot point in this story.)

**Wed 29 Jun 1994**  
**Waning Gibbous Moon**  
**Ministry of Magic**

Ms Jones was amazing, Harry thought, as she tore into the DMLE for leaving a prisoner - and not any prisoner, but one of their _own,_ an _Auror_ \- in Azkaban for 12 years without a trial! Amelia Bones, a no-nonsense witch who seemed to be fair-minded, went back into the evidence, and actually discovered Sirius’s wand had never been examined. Harry was allowed to watch as the wand displayed the last ten spells it had cast, in reverse order. _None_ of them was a blasting charm or a killing curse. 

The fact that Peter Pettigrew had left no body, when twelve muggle bodies had been found on the scene, was questioned. It was common knowledge that magical bodies were more sturdy than muggle bodies. Any magical explosion that completely destroyed a magical person’s body should have completely wiped out several neighbourhoods to the foundations. 

As for the Fidelius, that was such obscure magic that no laws governed it. Telling a Fidelius Secret was no crime, except that telling one to Voldemort counted as ‘Death Eater Activities’. Ms Jones got Amelia Bones to confess that she didn’t know how the Fidelius worked. After Bones questioned more of the DMLE force, she found exactly one person who understood the Fidelius, and that was a witch who had worked abroad before coming to Britain. She advised Bones that there would be no way of proving what had happened in a Fidelius Ritual cast nearly 15 years ago, and that it would be best to simply drop that charge.

Basically, what the Ministry had was no proof that Peter Pettigrew had been murdered, not enough evidence to use for Death Eater charges, and no evidence that Sirius Black’s wand had cast any spell that could possibly have caused an explosion. But to simply release Black would cause public panic. 

Sirius Black agreed to stand trial, for the chance of having his name officially cleared. He was in good spirits, even though the rat had escaped. Harry would not be living in the same room with the rat ever again, nor fall for its disguise. And Harry believed in him. Harry had brought him clean clothes, and the law-witch, and told him that his room at the Pottery was waiting for him. Sirius could feel so much _love_ coming from his godson that he was willing to put up with the Ministry’s farce of a trial just so he could be with Harry again.

* * *

* * *

**Thurs 30 Jun 1994**  
**Last Quarter Moon**  
**Ministry of Magic**

The day before the trial, Ms Jones brought people in to have Sirius made over completely - hair, facial hair, manicure, perfectly fitting boots, and properly tailored robes. Sirius tried to insist that it wasn’t necessary, and she told him to shut the fuck up, was he the law-witch around here? 

“All anyone thinks of when they hear your name is your Azkaban mug shot, which was not your finest moment. We need them to see Lord and Auror Black, innocent man who wants only to put this behind him.”

So he let himself be poked and prodded and made pretty. _It’s for Harry,_ he reminded himself. Even if he felt like he was ten years old again and going to his first grown-up dinner party.

* * *

**Fri 1 Jul 1994**  
**Waning Crescent Moon**  
**Ministry of Magic**

The day of the trial, he discovered that Harry and Hermione had been subjected to the makeover treatment as well. Both were clean and polished, and looked older than when he last saw them. _Ready for that dinner party as well,_ he thought. Harry had new glasses, and his hair parted to show his scar. He asked for a moment alone with Sirius, and once everyone had left them, Harry slid a ring onto Sirius’s finger. 

“Charlus’s wedding ring?” Sirius asked.

Harry tapped his nose. “Just in case. Do you remember?” He mouthed the words _Fortuna Redux._

Sirius nodded. He remembered. The Potter wedding rings had a portkey function built in, to take them safely home, keyed to the name of the goddess who oversaw return from a perilous journey. Portkeys wouldn’t be permitted within the Wizengamot, but he would have an opportunity between here and Azkaban. 

“ _Obscurus,”_ Sirius whispered, and the ring went invisible on his finger, another built in charm. 

* * *

The ‘Help Sirius Escape’ plan had a few more moving parts, because of course they couldn’t stay at the Pottery if Sirius was a fugitive again. Hermione had already discovered that very few magical countries would extradite to Magical Britain due to the fact that Azkaban was considered torture. Sirius would simply need to cross the channel to Francia, and he would be safe. Harry could seal up the Pottery again, transfer his vaults to the Gringotts branch in the city-state of Frankfurt, and the two of them would go to Beauxbatons, which was Hermione’s preliminary school choice. 

In the end, the plan wasn’t needed. The Wizengamot was shamed into exonerating Sirius Black, not only proclaiming him Not Guilty, but offering him compensation for his time in Azkaban. Sirius would have told them to shove their compensation somewhere, but Harry had hinted to him to take it, that they had plans. That money was important. 

* * *

**Fri 1 Jul 1994**  
**Waning Crescent Moon**  
**The Pottery**

The victory party at the Pottery was interrupted by Fawkes flaming in. Hermione actually growled, and wrote the word **_“NO!”_** in large letters and sent it back with Fawkes. Later, Dumbledore bounced off the wards. 

“Cub, is there any reason…” Sirius started.

“Fuck him,” Harry growled.

“He got me a trial. He testified for me,” Sirius said.

“No, fuck him,” Hermione said.

“They’ll tell you tomorrow,” Remus said with a sigh, that suggested he didn’t agree, but had given up trying to convince them. “Have some more whiskey.”

Sirius felt a little uneasy, but whatever the kids had to tell him, couldn’t be too bad. Right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fudge: Sirius Black was You-Know-Who's right hand man!  
> Fudge: We know this, because he was a Black who wasn't in Slytherin.  
> Fudge: He got himself sorted into Gryffindor on purpose so he could go undercover with the Light.  
> Fudge: The lack of a Dark Mark is more proof. You-Know-Who trusted him enough that he didn't have to mark him!  
> Fudge: All the Dark Wizards and Death Eaters he arrested as an Auror? More proof.  
> Fudge: Blood will out.


	5. Sirius loses his temper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius learns what happened to Harry and Hermione

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I didn't want to make it too easy for H&H, so they are still subject to the Trace, even in the Pottery. And though the interior of the house was in stasis, the garden continued to grow during the years of abandonment.)

**Sat 2 Jul 1994**   
**Waning Crescent Moon**   
**The Pottery**

Remus found Hermione in the morning, making notes at the kitchen table while Harry made pancakes. He sat down at the table next to her. 

“Was last night, the first time the two of you got drunk?” Remus asked.

Both answered in the affirmative. 

“You missed out on one of the rites of passage as a teenager - getting hungover,” Remus said. “Were metabolism. It’s nearly impossible to drink enough for that to happen.”

“Have you ever done it?” Hermione asked.

Remus’s eyes flicked over to Harry. “For the fortnight after James and Lily died, after I thought Peter had died and Sirius had betrayed us all, I did my best to stay drunk. Then after my first full moon without them, I woke up with a clear mind. I wasn’t recovered, by any means, but I wasn’t going to drink myself to death.”

“So what you’re saying is that Sirius is the only one of us who is going to be hungover?” Harry said, bringing the first plate of pancakes to the table. 

“Unless he managed to steal something to drink since he escaped, this is his first bender in thirteen years,” Hermione said. “He’s going to be wretched.”

“Remus or I will go pick him up a hangover cure after breakfast,” Harry said. “Eat up.”

* * *

Remus went. Hermione asked if he could check on Wolfsbane at the same time, but it didn’t work like that. Wolfsbane was such a difficult brew that you couldn’t get it from most apothecaries. There were very few Potioneers in Britain who could brew it, and of those, fewer who were willing to. Remus would need to speak to one of those people directly. Picking up a vial of hangover remedy off the shelf for a few sickles wasn’t the same thing at all.

When Sirius finally emerged from his room, he found pancakes waiting under a stasis charm and a vial next to his plate, which he downed without investigation. “For shame, Mr Padfoot. Eating at the same table with a Marauder and trusting what you’ve been given!” Remus said.

“On the contrary, Mr Moony, you wouldn’t prank a potions vial. You would have pranked the maple syrup or perhaps the bacon.”

“Sorry guys, but if I’m going to cook, then I’m going to have to lay down a blanket ‘no pranking my cooking’ rule. I don’t slave over a hot stove just to have my food ruined,” Harry said.

The two Marauders looked at one another with wide eyes. “You can’t just exempt the food!” Sirius said in outrage.

“I can and I will!” Harry said. “When you cook food that you bought in your kitchen, you can prank the hell out of it. In my kitchen with my food, no pranking. Right Hermione?”

“Damn straight,” she said, offering her hand for a high five. 

* * *

After breakfast, Sirius led them out through the overgrown garden that was wild and riotous with summer roses and birdsong, through a barely visible path that took the two adult wizards using cutting charms to get them through, until they reached a stream.

“We used to have it dammed off just about there,” Sirius pointed. “It must have rotted away. But it made this area a great swimming hole.”

“I don’t know how to swim,” Harry said.

“Then we’ll definitely have to fix the swimming hole. You can swim in the Roman bath, but it’s not as nice as being outdoors. And the lake at Hogwarts is always bloody cold.”

“We’re not going back to Hogwarts,” Hermione said.

Sirius stared at Hermione, then looked at Harry for confirmation. Harry just said. “Close your mouth, you’ll catch flies.”

“Wh-why… why?! Why aren’t you going back?”

“Sirius, this is a long story,” Harry said. “It starts with the night we met at the Shrieking Shack.”

“Actually, it starts with the night Harry and I were sorted…”

“That’s the long version. The short version is Hogwarts isn’t safe.”

“Of course it’s safe!” Sirius said. “It’s the safest-”

“So we’re going to go with the medium version, which starts the night we met. No interruptions, okay? Save your questions for the end.” Harry said.

Sirius looked at Remus, who said, “They’ve thought this through, Sirius. Just… hear them out.”

“You remember when we were surrounded by Dementors? We thought that was it for us. Then you woke up bound in Flitwick’s office, and we woke up in the Hospital Wing. What you don’t know is that at the same time that was happening, we were also at the other side of the lake, and Harry cast the Patronus that saved us,” Hermione said. 

Sirius only took a moment before he got it. “Time turner?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Lily had one in school. We figured it out when we caught two of her on the Marauder’s Map. We followed her under the Cloak until we caught her using it, then we badgered her until she confessed everything.” He looked at them. “So whose idea was it to use the Time turner that night?”

“Dumbledore’s,” Harry spat.

“Fucking hell,” Sirius said.

“Albus Twatwaffle Dumbledore told us to go back three turns and that perhaps two innocent lives could be spared. So we went to Hagrid’s to try and rescue Buckbeak the hippogriff,” Hermione said. “We should have just gotten brooms! That fucking prick Malfoy was right about that monster all along. It’s a menace and shouldn’t be around children. I can’t believe I spent the year trying to save its life!”

“What the lovely Hermione means to say is that we did rescue the hippogriff before it could be executed. Then we spent hours in the forest waiting for events, while dodging our past selves, and anyone else who might see us. Then we had to run because we realised we were in the path of a transformed werewolf. I wanted to see who cast the Patronus before I finally realised it was must have been me who did it.

"So I leapt out and cast the spell. For the first time, I saw my true Patronus emerge and gallop across the lake, charging the swarming Dementors and saving the group of us from the past. Hermione was scared, because we weren't supposed to be seen. And I said, 'I just saved all our lives! Get behind this bush, I'll explain.'

“Why did I say ‘get behind the bush?’ Why didn’t I say ‘get on the hippogriff?’” Harry groaned. “While the two of us were discussing whether or not I had broken Causality by seeing myself cast a Patronus, a werewolf had crept up on us. I must have attracted it by shouting the spell. I grabbed Hermione and tried to throw her onto Buckbeak.”

Hermione took over the story. “That’s when that stupid fucking hippogriff tried to attack me. Because we hadn’t bowed. Never mind that we’d saved its life. Never mind that we’d bowed to it several times that night. We didn’t bow when a werewolf was charging at us, so it flung me about thirty feet. Harry tried to bow, but Bucky was having none of it, and so we ran, and occasionally sent spells behind us. We tried to reach Hagrid’s cabin, but we had escaped the wolf that way once already, and it was cunning enough not to let us reach the same bolthole again. Our only hope was to get to the Forest, and into the trees. I was growing winded, so Harry dragged me along. 

"Stunning spells did nothing to it. Incendio was better. Its fur caught fire, and it had to roll a moment to put it out, giving us a chance to get ahead. Harry caught Lupin once with the dancing feet hex, which gave us a precious few moments."

“I finally got to a tree and gave Hermione a lift, the muggle way.” Harry demonstrated, with his hands together, miming a lift. “That’s when…” He tried to say more, and he literally couldn’t. His lips wouldn’t forms the words.

“That’s when Lupin lunged up and bit Harry's arm,” Hermione said.

“WHAT?!” Sirius said, leaping to his feet. “You said it was a thestral bite!”

“I wasn’t going to tell you otherwise in the middle of the Ministry!” Hermione said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Then I used my wand to levitate Harry into the tree, and Lupin got my foot before I could climb high enough to be out of his reach. We’re both werewolves.”

“WHAT THE FUCK REMUS?” Sirius shouted. “You turned the children? You turned both of them?!”

Remus looked utterly ashamed and broken. He handed his wand to Harry and got to his feet, not even trying to dodge Sirius’s fist as it came at his face.

* * *

Harry and Hermione didn’t particularly want to witness this, so they walked back to the garden. There was a time when Harry would have felt compelled to intervene, but Hermione pointed out that the two men had issues going back to 1981 that they needed to deal with, and since she had wisely pocketed Sirius’s wand before their story started, they didn’t have to worry about the men throwing curses at one another. 

They uncovered a garden swing and worked together to pull out the weeds and overgrown shrubbery all around it. “This would be a lot easier with magic,” Hermione said. “We should wait for the so-called grown-ups to do it.”

“Maybe, but I don’t want to go inside on such a nice day,” Harry said. 

“I guess.”

“It’s okay, you can go get a book or ten. I won’t complain,” Harry said.

Hermione laughed, and shoved Harry lightly. “I’m not that bad, am I?”

“Pretty bad,” Harry said. “But just imagine how nice it will be to read on this swing once this garden is fixed up. I don’t want to leave the man-children unattended, but once they’re done with their issues, I’ll go to the garden centre and get a lawn mower and some proper muggle tools that I can use to get this whipped into shape.”

“You don’t want to let Sirius and Remus do it?” Hermione asked.

“Not… really? I mean, I don’t mind if they help, but… I’ve never had a place that was mine before. I want to be the one who does it,” Harry said. “I did it at Privet Drive, but it wasn’t for me. This will be.”

Hermione smiled softly. “It’s going to look great. It’ll be like _The Secret Garden_ except without the creepy gaslighting about how you’re not really sick because you can just sit in a garden and pretend you aren’t, and you’ll be able to walk again.”

Harry laughed. “I remember that book! It happened in _Heidi_ too, didn’t it? Maybe we can just hang out in a garden or on a pretty mountainside, and presto-magic, no more lycanthropy!”

* * *

It was well after lunch before Remus and Sirius returned, battered and bruised, their arms around one another. Hermione barely looked up from her book, but Harry ran to get the bag of potions that Remus had picked up this morning. Hermione had told him to stock up the household, and Harry had seconded that, so he’d come back with bruise paste, pain reliever, and various other simples. 

Harry patched Sirius up well enough to be presentable (Remus would need a few days of healing) before dragging him out to a garden centre. Sirius had to Confund the salesman to keep him from noticing that they had purchased and taken away a shed’s worth of garden tools away without requesting delivery. Sirius had simply shrunk everything down and placed it in a single bag. 

* * *

Late that night, after the four of them had eaten fish and chips, Sirius looked between Remus, who had always been ashamed of being a werewolf, and the two teenagers, who just… weren’t. The two Marauders were sprawled on the floor in the living room, playing a game of chess. Hermione was on the sofa, and Harry had his head in her lap. 

“Why aren’t you two more upset about this? I don’t understand,” Sirius asked.

Hermione absently toyed with Harry’s hair as she answered. 

“You have to realise, that night in the tree felt like it was a hundred years long. We knew what was going to happen to us. We had all night to panic and freak out and then when that got old, we started to make plans.”

“ _Hermione_ made plans,” Harry said. “I never finished blaming myself.”

“You were blaming yourself that you were bitten?” Remus asked.

“I was blaming myself that Sirius was Kissed. We spent the whole endless night believing we’d failed. That I’d lost my godfather a few hours after finding him. I was pretty fucked up.”

Hermione petted his hair. “But we knew we were in it together. Harry might have run away to brood alone if it had just been him, but he’d never leave me behind. We decided that night we wanted to leave Hogwarts. Harry’s idea was just to go public, and let the outrage get him expelled. The Fidelius was Dumbledore’s idea.”

“And then you turned it around on him so he forgot the secret. Great prank!” Sirius said.

“All Hermione,” Harry said. “She’s the brains of the operation.”

“Remus was the brains of the Marauders,” Sirius said.

“Peter was as well,” Remus said in a quiet voice. “We shouldn’t underestimate him. He wasn’t the most magically powerful of us, but he was the smartest.”

“I thought you said he was the last one to learn the animagus transformation!” Harry said.

“Harry, learning the transformation at all is an amazing accomplishment at any age,” Hermione said. “Being able to do it before graduating Hogwarts proves he was a gifted wizard. Less than one in a thousand can do it at all.”

“Five points to Gryffindor,” Remus said. “The main reason he was the last one to learn is because of the size difference. Changing to an animal that is closer in size to human is much easier than going to a much larger or much smaller one. Of course very small animals are the most useful.”

“That’s okay,” Harry said cheerfully. “Now that I’m a wolf, I can cross animagery off my to-do list, right? It’s incompatible magic or something.”

Sirius smiled sadly. “That’s right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> James: I am a noble stag! The symbol of leadership and virility!  
> Peter: *cough* prey animal *cough*  
> James: What?  
> Peter: I said great animal! Not much use inside Hogwarts, but great animal, still. What about you, Sirius?  
> Sirius: I'm a grim! So I can scare the life out of magicals, or I can just be an adorable dog around muggles and get cuddles from pretty girls.  
> Peter: Nice! Got anyone you want to scare?  
> Sirius: I'm making a list!  
> Remus: What about you, Peter?  
> Peter: Oooh, still working on it. I have a feeling it's going to be a good one though...


	6. Hermione Bleeds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione menstruates. Lupin advocates sterility.
> 
> (CW: menstruation, references to eugenics, discussion of hypothetical non-con)

**Sun 3 Jul 1994** **  
** **Waning Crescent Moon** **  
** **The Pottery**

Hermione had been aware that her sense of smell had been growing more sensitive as every day passed and the lycanthropy burrowed more into her system. She could easily tell the inhabitants of the Pottery apart by scent, and knew which part of the garden Harry had been working in by the fragrances on his clothes. The smell of old books - one of her favourite scents in the world - had become so much richer and deeper as she could separate it out into notes of leather and parchment for the magical books, paper and glue for the muggle books. She suspected in time, she would recognise each of her books by scent alone.

But she had never been aware just how strong the smell of blood was until her period started. 

Which wouldn’t have been so bad, except that she had to leave this bathroom at some point, which meant that Harry would smell it. Lupin would smell it.

_ Lupin was a professor - he smelled menstruating girls every day at Hogwarts. I’m sure he’ll be mature about it. _

That just left Harry, her best friend. Who was likely to be utterly mortified.

_ It could be worse. I could be having my Lady Days at the full moon, and wouldn’t that be a nightmare - don’t know if tampons would stay in through the transformation. _

Nothing to it though. She couldn’t stay in her bathroom until her period was over, so she had to face it. Harry would get over it.

* * *

When she got to the breakfast table, Harry looked at her, then his face turned extremely red, and he ducked down, facing his eggs and toast for several minutes. When he looked up again, he very transparently asked her if she’d heard back from any of the schools they’d written to. Which of course she hadn’t. Hedwig hadn’t returned yet, but she’d only been sent to Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. They’d hired a postal “owl” to take their letters to Ilvermony and Castelobruxo - actually the service included two postal birds, with a portkey in the middle to cross the Atlantic - so they didn’t expect to hear from those schools for at least another fortnight. 

But it was a nice distraction from the more obvious topic of Hermione’s menstrual cycle, which neither of them wanted to talk about.

Then Lupin walked in, looked directly at Hermione, and said, “Oh, Hermione, that reminds me. Something we need to do before the Full. You need to see a Healer about getting sterilised.”

He dropped those words casually, as he began to serve up his own breakfast. As if he hadn’t just suggested sterilisation to a fourteen year old girl.

_ Because I’m  _ **_tainted_ ** _ now. _

She didn’t know at what point she had grabbed hold of Harry’s hand and began squeezing it with all her strength, but it took her a moment to find the air to speak.

“Lupin, what the fuck?” she finally got out.

“Female werewolves can’t bear normal children,” Remus said, spreading the marmalade on his toast. “The transformations destroy a normal fetus. The only way for a female werewolf to reproduce is with a male werewolf, so that the child has the curse from its first heartbeat, and can transform along with its mother. Making sure that you don’t transmit the curse to an innocent baby is just the right thing to do.”

“Normal?” Harry said. “Remus, do you even hear yourself? You sound like a  _ Nazi _ ! Let's make sure the undesirables don’t reproduce, so you can have a Master Race!”

Hermione felt buoyed by Harry’s support.  _ I’ll always have his support. Maybe bringing Lupin into our pack was a mistake from the start.  _ “I’m fourteen years old. I’m not deciding that I’m never going to have children just because you have some serious self-hatred issues.”

“But it’s much simpler magically than surgically. It’s just a simple spell-”

“That shrivels up my uterus - yes I’ve  _ had  _ Health class!” Hermione said. 

“You can’t possibly believe it's conscionable to transmit the curse to an infant! You’ve never even transformed yet - you don’t know what it’s like!” Remus said.

“Do you see me running out to get pregnant?” Hermione said. “No, because I’m too young for that! And if I’m too young for that, I’m too young to  _ curse my uterus off.” _

“Hermione -” Remus said.

“No. You know what? No. Don’t speak to me.” And she ran out the door, slamming it most satisfactorily.

* * *

Of course Harry came after her. She was in the window seat in her private sitting room, but she wasn’t able to focus on her book. Harry climbed up into the seat next to her and hugged her close.

“Do you want me to send him away?” Harry asked. “I want to send him away. He had no right to say any of that to you.”

Hermione wanted to say yes. She was tempted, but, “We don’t have Wolfsbane yet. And… I still think we shouldn’t go through our first transformation alone, but...”

“You’re worried about something else,” Harry said.

“I might be fertile on the Full,” Hermione said. “What if we can’t trust Remus? What if his wolf decides that now that he’s got a pack, he’ll claim a mate? What if I don’t have enough of my mind to say no? Or he forces me?”

Hermione hadn’t meant to blurt all of that out, but now that it was, she felt better. She’d always felt safer as a witch than as a muggle woman, because she had a wand. But she couldn’t use a wand after she transformed. 

“He’s gone,” Harry promised. “He’ll be gone before dinner.”

Hermione bit her lip. “What about Sirius? What if he doesn’t like it?”

Harry shrugged. “Sirius can put Lupin in his own house if he doesn’t like it. This is my house, and I don’t want him here. Sirius may be my legal guardian, but I hold the wards at the Pottery, and I can welcome or boot out whoever I choose.”

Hermione flung her arms around Harry. “Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lupin: I hate my own identity.  
> Dumbledore: You are the perfect ambassador to your fellow Dark Creatures!  
> Lupin: *sigh* Sure, okay, I'll go among the filthy animals. Because I owe you so much!  
> Dumbledore: I'm sure they'll love you! *pops a lemon drop*
> 
> *later*  
> Lupin: I'd like to talk to you about our Lord and Saviour Albus Dumbledore.  
> Joe Werewolf: Kevin! You said this guy wasn't weird!   
> Kevin Werewolf: He said he'd buy the kebabs! I just wanted doner kebabs!


	7. Fudge Visits the Burrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione leaves to see her parents. Sirius discovers that Fudge is up to something.

**Mon Jul 4 1994** **  
****Waning Crescent Moon** **  
****The Pottery**

By the next morning, Lupin was packed up and gone. Sirius, much to Harry’s relief, did not object in the least, and insisted that Harry and Hermione had every right to be angry with him. 

For his part, Lupin left a note on the table - a promise to return if his cubs ever needed him, and the name of two apothecaries that could source Wolfsbane. Harry turned the note over to Sirius and asked him to handle getting their potion.

A few minutes later, Hedwig arrived at the breakfast table, in a flutter of importance, with a bundle of documents. Harry opened them up, then shouted for Hermione. “It’s the Beauxbatons information!”

Hermione came shambling out of her bedroom, in her dressing gown, her hair wilder than ever. She didn’t look as if she’d slept well. “Can I see? What about Durmstrang?”

Harry handed colourful brochures over to Hermione, while feeding a sausage to Hedwig. “Let me see… Oh good! Durmstrang is here too. Good job, Hedwig!”

Unlike the Beauxbatons packet, the Durmstrang information did not include any outdoor photographs. There was a photograph of a class - Harry thought it looked like transfiguration. Another of a dining hall. A third of a dormitory. It was difficult to get a feel for the school itself from these photos, even though they were magical photos. 

By contrast, Beauxbatons had a small booklet entitled ‘Welcome to Beauxbatons’ with photographs of the campus on every page. The school was in a gorgeous chateaux surrounded by formal gardens. Mountains filled the horizon, along with a dramatic waterfall. Harry flipped through the booklet, and stopped when he saw an eleven foot tall woman leading a line of students. “Hermione, look at the Headmistress!”

“Harry, look at the electives they have to offer!” Hermione said. She was scanning the written information, while Harry absorbed the pictures.

“She’s as tall as Hagrid!” Harry said. He paused. “What makes a person that tall? I just accepted it when I was eleven, but it’s obviously not typical.”

“Hagrid?” Sirius said. “He’s a half-giant. Told us when we were students. Don’t go spreading that around. People hate on giants more than they do werewolves. I doubt the same thing is true of the Beauxbatons headmistress though. Giants aren’t very bright. Hagrid’s a prodigy for his kind, being able to be a teacher. You’d never see one being a school head though. She probably was in a potions accident or something.”

“She wrote to me,” Hermione said, and read the letter aloud:

> Dear Mademoiselle Granger, 
> 
> Beauxbatons is always willing to accept transfers from Hogwarts. However, please be aware that due to certain oddities in British educational standards, you will need to take placement tests in each subject before the school term begins. Transfer students may use translation charms during the placement exams, however, it is hoped that they will work hard to have achieved fluency in French before the end of their first year. Be assured that the Magical Competency Exams, taken at the end of year six, must be written in French. (These are generally supposed to be equivalent to your OWLs, which at Hogwarts are taken at the end of year five.) 
> 
> There are students at Beauxbatons year-round, so if you choose to arrive early, this may help you assimilate with the student body and begin language immersion. As mentioned in our school brochures, we welcome magicals of all races, including those that are known as ‘creatures’ in your country. I hope you ask because you are also welcoming to others, and not because you fear or dislike them. The latter is a most unwelcome attitude here at Beauxbatons.
> 
> If you would like to receive a tour of the campus, and meet the teachers, I have enclosed a portkey for your use that will be active for the next fortnight.
> 
> Kindest regards,
> 
> Madame Maxime”

Harry grinned at Hermione. “Shall we go?”

“Harry! I can’t just go to France without talking to my parents first!” Hermione said.

His face fell. He never thought about parents. “Do they know you’re here?”

“Not _‘here’_ here. I sent an owl from school telling them I had Romping Rubella and couldn’t return to Hampstead until I had recovered. But I really should go spend a few days with them, and talk to them about changing schools,” Hermione said.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Harry asked.

She shook her head too quickly. “No. No, I can handle my parents.”

“Do you want _me_ to come with you?” Sirius asked.

Hermione gave a wry smile. “No offense, Sirius, but you’ve been on muggle telly all year as an escaped mass murderer. I definitely don’t want you meeting my parents before they’ve heard about your exoneration.”

“How are you getting there then?” Harry asked. 

“There’s a public floo in Godric’s Hollow, right?” she asked. The floo in the Pottery wasn't currently connected to the floo network, nor did they intend to. Once they applied to reconnect it, their location would be available to anyone who knew their way around the Ministry - like Dumbledore. “I can take it to the Witch’s Brew - that’s a magical pub about a mile from my house.”

“The public floo is in the pub - the Happy Hippogriff,” Sirius said. “I can Side-Along Apparate you to there."

"Ugh, not if there's another way!" Hermione said. "I'd sick up on you for sure."

"The Hippo's about an hour’s walk from here. Or a few minutes on a broom. How’s your foot?” Sirius asked.

“I think it’s as healed as it’s going to get. I’ll probably always have a bit of a limp,” Hermione said. 

“We’d better fly then. Let me see if I can find Charlus’s old travelling broom - it had a shrinking charm built into it, so you can take it with you through the floo without violating the Statute,” Sirius said.

Hermione looked at Harry - after all, it was his grandfather’s property that Sirius was casually giving away, but he only nodded. “Good idea. I approve of you carrying a broom with you, even if it’s just for emergencies.”

“Why do you call it a travelling broom?” Hermione asked. To her, a broom was a broom.

“Racing brooms are the ones we use in Quidditch, designed for speed and manoeuvrability. Travelling brooms are designed for comfort. If you were travelling long distances, you’d want one of them. They let you sit upright, with handlebars rather like a bicycle’s,” Harry said. 

It took going from room to room with Sirius using the Summoning Charm before they heard it rattling in a drawer. When Harry opened the drawer, a small broom the size of a wand zoomed out and hovered in front of Sirius. 

“Best thing about this,” Sirius said, as he tapped it with his wand, two taps to the tip of the broom and three taps to the tail twigs, “is that the charm is built into the broom. It won’t show up as Underage Magic.”

The broom enlarged to the size of the racing brooms Hermione was more familiar with, then a leather bucket seat, footrests, and handlebar unfolded out of darker coloured patches on the wood. “Wow, that’s really advanced spatial magic,” Hermione said. 

“You should mount the broom here, so we can adjust it for you. Charlus wasn’t a tall man, but I think he was taller than you are now,” Sirius said. 

A few adjustments, and Hermione was more comfortable on a broom than she had ever been. She took it outside, and she actually flew a few laps around the garden with Harry. 

“I actually don’t hate this!” Hermione shouted to Harry. “I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it like I did flying on the school brooms!”

Harry was delighted. He insisted that the broom was hers to keep, and that afternoon, they flew into Godric’s Hollow so she could take the floo from the Happy Hippogriff.

* * *

 **Thurs Jul 7 1994** **  
****Waning Crescent Moon** **  
****The Pottery**

“It’s weird here without Hermione,” Harry announced as he made sandwiches. 

“En francais, Harry,” Sirius prompted. 

“C’est… weird… ici sans Hermione,” Harry said. “C’est… je ne sais pas.”

“Bizarre,” a portrait said. “C’est bizarre.”

“Merci, Madam Potter,” Harry said.

The biggest hurdle to going to Beauxbatons was that Harry, unlike Hermione, had never learned French. Harry had been disappointed to learn that there was no spell that taught one another language, but there was one that made the mind more receptive to languages spoken and heard. Sirius was casting it for him every day, and they were practising total immersion with the help of Sirius and the Pottery portraits, nearly all of whom spoke the language.

He and Hermione would need to take placement exams before the start of term, due to what the Headmistress called, “Educational oddities in the British system” and what Sirius called “Binns and the DADA curse being infamous throughout Europe.” Unlike the Hogwarts system, students didn’t advance year by year, but course by course. Someone like Neville might be in an upper level Herbology class and a remedial Potions course, rather than being held to the same level as everyone else his age. Harry gloomily expected he wouldn’t share any courses with Hermione, except perhaps Defense. He was permitted to ask for translation assistance for his placement test questions, and to write his answers in English, but once he was enrolled, he would be expected to use French. 

They weren’t entirely settled on Beauxbatons - they were planning on taking a portkey to the school to take a tour and ask more questions - but it was looking like their top choice. Their second choice was a school in the U.S., the Smoky Mountain Academy of Magic. It had the advantage of being an English language school, but it was farther from Hermione’s parents.

Sirius said that if Harry’s parents had lived, he would have been taught French, German, and Latin the same time he was taught to read and write. It was one pure-blood custom that Sirius actually approved of, “If you know French and German, you can get around almost anywhere in magical Europe. We’ll start you on Latin next summer, and German the year after.”

Harry thought French was quite enough to be going on with, but it felt really warm inside (and kind of scary) having an adult who was invested in his welfare and academic achievements. He haltingly tried to express something like this to Sirius, in French, when they were interrupted by an owl.

“What the… that owl looks nearly dead!” Sirius blurted out, in English.

“It’s the Weasley’s owl,” Harry said. “C’est la chouette des Weasley. Il s’appelle Errol.”

Errol landed in the butter dish, but extricated himself quickly and hopped over to Harry. He saw the reason for the owl’s alacrity at once. Errol was carrying a Howler.

“Poor Errol. Mrs Weasley shouldn’t make you carry these,” Harry said, untying it quickly. He didn’t know what he’d done to anger her, but he’d best get it over with. 

The parchment began shouting, not in Molly Weasley’s voice, but in Ron’s voice instead:

“HARRY MATE WHAT ARE YOU DOING TALKING ABOUT GOING TO ANOTHER SCHOOL AND TAKING HERMIONE TOO? THIS IS SOME KIND OF JOKE RIGHT? DUMBLEDORE WAS HERE TALKING TO MUM AND DAD AND HE ASKED ME IF I KNEW ABOUT YOUR PLANS AND I FELT LIKE A RIGHT FOOL BECAUSE I HAVEN’T EVEN GOTTEN AN OWL FROM YOU OR HERMIONE SINCE SCHOOL LET OUT!”

“Hmph, you haven’t written to me either,” Harry grumbled. “Owls fly both ways you know.”

“You’d better not be sending a Howler to Hermione,” Percy’s voice said on the Howler.

“Merlin, Percy, I’m not daft. I know I can’t send a Howler to a muggle address!” Ron said to Percy. “ANYWAY, IF YOU ARE OVER YOUR ROMPING RUBELLA YOU SHOULD COME OVER!”

“I told you, Harry was at Black’s trial. He’s fine now,” Percy’s voice said on the Howler.

“DON’T FORGET TO INVITE HARRY TO THE WORLD CUP!” That was either Fred or George.

“I was just getting to that!” Ron complained. “SINCE GEORGE SPOILED THE SURPRISE, DAD AND PERCY GOT TICKETS TO THE QUIDDITCH WORLD CUP FROM FUDGE -”

“Minister Fudge!” Percy interjected.

“- AND HE INCLUDED ENOUGH FOR ALL OF US, AND HE SAID TO BE SURE AND INVITE YOU AND BLACK TOO.”

“WILL YOU STOP SHOUTING IN THERE AND GET BACK TO YOUR CHORES? THE MINISTER IS COMING OVER AND YOU BOYS HAVE TRAIPSED THE MEADOW ALL OVER THE HOUSE!” That was Molly’s voice.

“DON’T BE SEXIST, MUM, I HELPED THEM!” Ginny shouted.

“Why is the Minister going over to the Burrow?” Sirius asked.

“I GUESS I HAVE TO stop shouting and finish this letter and send it. Floo over sometime, you git, and tell me you aren’t changing schools! Or if you are, you better have a bloody good reason!

Your friend,  
Ron”

Harry was laughing so hard he could barely make out the end of Ron’s Howler, but he looked up at Sirius, who looked furious.

“Harry, let’s go! You’ve got to get there before that idiot Fudge does!”

“Wait, what?”

“No time!” Sirius said. He took Harry’s hand, and Apparated them to the Happy Hippogriff in Godric’s Hollow. 

“I don’t understand!” Harry said, when he had caught his breath again. 

“Just go to the Burrow and stop them from signing anything Fudge gives them!” Sirius said.

“How?”

“Improvise!” Sirius said. “Remind them that Peter was a Death Eater! I’ll be there as soon as I can!”

Harry went to drop a few sickles in the floo jar on the mantle and realised he didn’t have his coin pouch. 

“Just go, I’ll get it,” Sirius said, and dropped a galleon in the jar, enough to cover a dozen or more journeys.

“The Burrow!” Harry shouted. 

* * *

**Thurs Jul 7 1994** **  
****Waning Crescent Moon** **  
****The Burrow**

He tumbled out in the middle of the Burrow’s kitchen, tumbling even worse than he usually did coming out of the floo. Was that a trip jinx in front of the fireplace?

“Blimey, Harry,” George said. “You aren’t wearing shoes.”

“Don’t sign anything!” Harry said breathlessly.

Mrs Weasley bustled in. “Harry, dear, let me look at you! You lost weight during your illness, I’m quite sure of it. Come sit at the table and let me fix you some lunch.”

Harry, who was certain he had put on half a stone since being bitten by Lupin, and had just eaten besides, tried to demure. “I’m really not hungry, Mrs Weasley. Has Fudge - I mean Minister Fudge arrived yet?”

“No, but Arthur’s hand is pointing to Travelling, so I’m sure they’ll be here any minute - you really shouldn’t linger in front of the floo.”

Mrs Weasley’s warning was too late, as Cornelius Fudge stepped out of the floo and tripped over Harry, who was just clambering up from the floor. Then Arthur Weasley stepped out behind him, and fell atop them both.

“Sorry! Sorry!” Harry said. “I’m really terrible at the floo. I’m so sorry, Minister! It’s all my fault. I was in the way.” He picked up the Minister’s lime green bowler hat and held it out for him. “Are you hurt? Maybe you should see a Mediwitch. You might have bruised ribs.”

“Harry? Is that you?” Mr Weasley shook Harry’s hand. “Good to see you again. Don’t worry, I’m sure the Minister is just fine. I’m glad you’re here, we want to invite you to the Quidditch World -”

“NO!” Harry said.

“No?” Ron said, who had just poured into the room with Ginny and the rest of the Weasley boys. The kitchen was rather crowded.

“We shouldn’t go to the Quidditch World Cup! Especially not you! Ron was just named publicly as having helped capture a Death Eater who had evaded justice for over a decade! Going to a public event might make you a target to any other hidden followers of Voldemort!” Harry blurted out.

Everyone flinched at the name. “Oh Ron, I never thought of that!” Mrs Weasley said. “You’d be surrounded by strangers…”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mum, he’d be surrounded by his family!” Percy said. “Dad, Bill, Charlie, and I will all be there, and able to use our wands.”

“But you’ll all be targets too!” Harry said. “What if Pettigrew was in contact with other Death Eaters the whole time he lived with you?”

“He was a pet rat!” Fudge said indignantly. “He was no danger to anyone! No harm was done, except to Black, and that’s been settled!”

Mrs Weasley gathered her full height, which came barely past Fudge’s shoulder. “Now see here! That pet rat was a _Death Eater_ and he slept in the same _bedroom_ with my _children!_ I have nightmares every night imagining what could have happened! How would you feel if you had a Death Eater in your house, pretending to be a pet? Would you feel safe? Would you feel that no harm was done?”

Fudge coughed a few times, and then said, “We’ve gone rather off topic here. I just want to handle the World Cup tickets, and of course I’m a very busy man. So if you’ll just sign here. It doesn’t obligate you to actually attend, so you can make that decision on your own time…” He pulled out a scroll and unrolled it on the table. 

That was when George, to whom Harry had managed to whisper a few words during Mrs Weasley’s rant, spilled a pitcher of pumpkin juice all over it. “Oops! I just meant to offer you a drink!” he said. “Let me just wipe that up.”

“No, I’ll get it,” Percy said. He was a champ at household spells, but when he pulled out his wand to vanish the liquid and rescue the parchment (a spell Harry had seen him cast many times at Hogwarts to rescue Gryffindor homework), his wand squawked and turned into a rooster that began flapping its wings and screeching. 

Harry gave George a secret thumbs up.

…

“CORNELIUS FUDGE, ARE YOU IN THERE?!” a witch shouted from outside, as far as the Apparition Point. Harry had the distinct pleasure of seeing Fudge go absolutely white with terror, and immediately spin on one heel to try to Disapparate. 

“Anti-apparition jinx?” Molly said, looking as terrified as Fudge. “Wands out, everyone! Ron, try the floo powder.”

Ron was the closest to the fireplace, so he tossed some powder into the flames. They didn’t turn green. “Floo’s down!”

“Mollywobbles, it’s okay, that’s just-” Arthur started.

“Hide me!” Fudge whispered. 

“Upstairs, third floor, on the right,” Percy whispered back.

Fudge took off running. There was a small explosion, and Percy winced. “ _THIRD_ floor!”

The twins high-fived one another.

A moment later, the witch had reached the kitchen door and pounded on it. “ARTHUR LET ME IN!”

Mr Weasley looked worriedly towards the stairs, then went to open the door.

“Arthur no!” Molly said, tugging him back. "Death Eaters!"

“I _know_ her,” he said with a sigh, as he opened the door. “Enid, why did you jinx the place, you’ve scared us all half to death?”

“ACCIO SETTLEMENT!” Enid Jones roared. The remains of the parchment that Fudge had attempted to get them to sign flew across the room into her hand. She cleaned the pumpkin juice off with a flick of her wand and read.

Sirius Black ambled in behind his law-witch. “‘Lo Harry. How’d you do?”

“Nobody signed,” Harry said.

“Good job!”

“Sirius Black is in my kitchen,” Mrs Weasley said, and sat down hard. “How is this my life?”

“He’s innocent,” Harry protested. “Exonerated and everything.”

“I know that… I just…” she cast a cooling charm on herself. “Percy, dear, would you put the kettle on?”

“Of course, Mother,” Percy said.

“THAT SWINE!” Enid said, having finished her examination of the parchment. “WHERE IS HE HIDING?”

“W-who are you talking about, Enid?” Arthur asked nervously.

“CORNELIUS FUDGE! HE TRIED TO DEFRAUD YOU INTO SIGNING AWAY YOUR SETTLEMENT RIGHTS IN THE PETER PETTIGREW CASE FOR A QUIDDITCH GAME! TWELVE YEARS! TWELVE YEARS YOU HAD A DEATH EATER LIVING IN YOUR HOME DUE TO MINISTRY FUCK-UPS, AND AN AFTERNOON AT QUIDDITCH IS SUPPOSED TO MAKE IT ALL BETTER?!”

“To be fair, it’s the Quidditch _World Cup_ ,” Fred said.

“It wasn’t as if they were Chudley Cannons tickets,” George finished.

“Hey!” Ron protested.

Percy returned with the kettle, and a constellation of mis-matched tea-cups floating around him. “Minister Fudge couldn’t have been trying to defraud us, Miss Jones. I’m sure this is all a misunderstanding.”

“Yes, a misunderstanding,” Arthur echoed.

Molly stared at Enid Jones, ignoring the tea. “We’re entitled to a settlement?”

“I thought we were,” Arthur said. “But the Minister and his people explained that-”

“He explained things to you without your own law-witch present?” Enid Jones said in a low, cold voice, that was somehow more terrifying than all the shouting she had done before. “Where is he?”

“Upstairs, third floor on the right,” Ginny said at once, “Want me to show you?”

“If you can just go and tell him that he has three minutes to get down here before this ceases to be the civil case of Weasley vs the Ministry and instead becomes the criminal case of Her Maj vs Cornelius Fudge,” Enid said to Ginny, with a wink.

“Yes, ma’am!” Ginny said, and tore off up the steps.

Enid sat at the table and made herself a cup of tea. “More seriously, Arthur, do you want me to represent your family? Black dragged me here because he suspected Cornelius was up to something dodgy, but I’m perfectly content to give you a list of law-witches and wizards that I trust not to be in the Minister’s back pocket.”

“What kind of settlement are we talking about?” Molly asked, still waving her wand across her face. “It must be at least a hundred galleons, or he wouldn’t have offered those tickets…”

“Quite a bit more than that,” Enid said simply. 

Cornelius Fudge appeared on the staircase, with Ginny Weasley behind him.

“Ginevra Weasley, do you have the Minister of Magic at wandpoint?!” Arthur gasped.

Ginny quickly shook the trick wand in her hand to try and hide the evidence. “Of course not, Dad. I just found my… rubber trout… in Percy’s room.”

Fudge seemed braced for Enid to begin shouting again. Instead, she jabbed her wand at him, and he shrieked as bats began climbing out of his ears.

Ginny dropped to her seat next to Enid. “You are my hero. Forever. I want to be you when I grow up. Please, take me as your apprentice.”

Enid grinned. “Sure, kid. How much do you like doing library research and writing essays?”

Ginny grimaced. “Not… even a little bit?”

“Fraid your career as a law-witch might not go very far. I can teach you twelve variations on the Earbat hex though.”

“Twelve?!” Ginny said, delighted.

“Earwax, bogies, tear ducts, salivary glands, armpit hair, fingernail and toenail grime, belly button lint, pubic hair-”

“Miss Jones!” Molly said indignantly.

“...and I’d better leave off there until you’re older,” Enid said. “Mr and Mrs Weasley? Cornelius? How about we send the kids out and have a nice long discussion?”

* * *

Most of the Weasleys, along with Harry and Sirius, poured outside and went to the broomshed. Ron dragged Harry off behind the chicken coop. “So what’s up with you and Hermione changing schools?”

"Did Dumbledore say how he'd found out?" Harry asked. "We hadn't told anyone, except Sirius." _And Lupin. Did Lupin tell him?_ Harry felt deeply betrayed.

"No, not to me. So it's true?"

“We haven’t decided for sure!" Harry protested, which wasn’t entirely a lie, though the only thing they hadn’t decided on was which school. “But it’s something we thought about while we were in quarantine.”

“But why? You can’t leave Hogwarts!”

“Mate, Hogwarts is bloody dangerous!” Harry said. “We’ve all nearly been killed every year we’ve been there!” 

“Hogwarts is the safest…”

“Troll, Cerebus, Voldemort, Mad House Elf, Basilisk, Voldemort again, Hippogriff, Dementors, Death Eater…” Harry recited, ticking the dangers off on his fingers as he went. 

“Hippogriff? Buckbeak never hurt anyone!” Ron protested.

“We were attacked by three of three Defense teachers.”

“Lupin didn’t mean to!”

“We weren’t attacked by Voldemort this year, so that just means he’ll be the defence teacher next year. Or maybe we’ll get a Death Eater.”

“That’s ridiculous! Dumbledore would never hire a Death Eater!”

“Anyway, Hermione is pretty sure her parents won't even let her stay at Hogwarts. A transfer is her only option to keep her wand, since she doesn't have OWLs yet. And I don’t want her to go alone,” Harry said.

“But what about me?”

“You could come too,” Harry said.

Ron scoffed. “Yeah, like Mum would ever agree to that. And I won’t be able to owl you very often. Errol can’t make overseas trips, so I’d have to pay for a postal owl.”

“ _I_ have an owl, you plonker. Just tell Hedwig to wait for you. Besides, Sirius owes you for breaking your leg - have him buy you an owl if you want one. The man is richer than Malfoy.”

“So that Firebolt _was_ sent by Sirius Black!” Ron exclaimed. Then he rubbed the back of his neck. “Oh Merlin… we owe Hermione an apology.”

Harry laughed. “ _You_ owe her one. I’ve already grovelled rather a lot for that and been forgiven.”

Ron tilted his head and gave Harry a strange look. “Harry… are you and Hermione… you know…?”

Harry blinked and stared at him blankly, suddenly wondering if Ron had figured out their secret. “Are we what?”

Ron made a swirling gesture with his hand. “Er… you know…”

“He’s asking if you and Hermione are together,” Ginny said, having snuck up on them on broomstick. “Or at least have kissed.”

“Er… neither.”

“Well, do you fancy her?” Ginny pressed.

“Er…” Harry said, images in his head of their hellish night in the tree, her body beneath the wet linen ritual tunic, the weight of her asleep against his shoulder, the scent of her. “...We should play quidditch!” he blurted out.

Ginny ruffled his hair, and Ron laughed and threw an arm around Harry’s shoulder. “Well mate, I’d give you the big brother talk and warn you not to hurt her, but Hermione can take care of herself.”

Their Quidditch game was interrupted by a messenger from the village. “Is Harry Evans here?” a teenage girl asked. 

“That’s me,” Harry said. Since the only telephones near the Pottery or the Burrow were public phones, Hermione had suggested using his mother’s maiden name for privacy if she'd needed to call. "Er, Sirius, I don't have any money."

The girl handed him a slip of parchment, and Sirius paid her a few sickles for bringing the message. Harry opened it and read, “Harmony Granjer for Harry Evans at the Burrow. Message: Please come with SB. I’m grounded and I need help explaining things.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ginny: I had a Dark Lord in my head for months. He made me attack my schoolmates.  
> Percy: I had a Death Eater in my bedroom for nine years.  
> Ron: I had a Death Eater on my pillow for three years.  
> Ginny: None of us are traumatised.  
> Ron: Why would we be?  
> Percy: I am.  
> Ginny: What?  
> Percy: I'm getting as far away from this place as I can.  
> Molly: Percy, no!  
> Percy: Bye! *slams door*


	8. The Drs Granger Are Angry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Full disclosure to the Grangers.

**Mon Jul 4 1994  
Waning Crescent Moon  
Hampstead**

Hermione's parents had never thought much of the maxim 'Never go to bed angry'. If Tessa and Carl went by that advice, they'd probably still be having their first fight, because neither of them was willing to compromise when their hackles were up. No, what both of them needed was time apart to cool down, preferably in separate bedrooms. It had taken Hermione until she was six to correlate that the times Mummy had a sleepover in her room were when Mummy and Daddy were fighting.

Because of that, she wasn't surprised to hear a soft tap on her door, several hours after she'd left her parents arguing in the dining room. 

"Come in, Mum," she called.

Tessa Granger came in, wearing nightshirt and slippers. "Can we have a sleepover, Buttercup?" she asked sheepishly. "Or are you too old for them now?"

"Oh Mum… of course you can!" Hermione said. 

Tessa crawled into bed with her daughter. "What are you reading?"

"L'Histoire de Beauxbatons," Hermione said. "It's one of the schools I am thinking of transferring to. The closest one on the list."

"Why don't you tell me about it," Tessa said. 

Hermione leaned against her Mum's shoulder. "It was founded in 1298, in the southern Pyrenees mountains…" Hermione continued for several minutes, discussing the things she had learned in her first, speedy, read through the book, while her mother stroked her hair.

"I owe you an apology," Tessa said. "We both do. You tried to tell us what was happening at Hogwarts back in your first year, and the way we reacted made you feel that you couldn't trust us."

Hermione remembered that first Christmas home, when she was asked questions about Fluffy, and the mountain troll, with her parents - particularly her father - growing more and more vehement that she not be allowed to go back if that school was going to be so unsafe. She had sworn, with a mental picture of crossed fingers, that she'd tell her parents if anything else dangerous happened, because it was the only way they would let her go back. She was 12 years old, and terrified that magic was going to be taken from her. ( _"We could be killed… or worse, expelled."_ ) 

Now, two and a half years later, she had confessed to them that she had lied to them ever since. She had left out the third floor corridor, polyjuice potion, the Heir of Slytherin, the basilisk, being petrified for weeks (she had later told her parents that an infection in the owlery had prevented her weekly letters), three close encounters with Dementors ( _"YOUR SCHOOL WAS SURROUNDED BY SOUL SUCKING MONSTERS ALL YEAR?!"_ ), using a time machine to attend classes, a terrorist disguised as a pet, an escaped criminal (who was actually innocent, but they didn't know that until later) breaking into the school twice, being chased by a werewolf, being savaged by a hippogriff…

Her parents were beyond furious at her. But when Carl started in on his insistence on pulling her from Hogwarts and putting her back in 'normal' school ( _"where you belong"_ ), Tessa had exploded. Her daughter's magic was her own, not Carl's, and no one but Hermione got to decide what to do with it.

"I shouldn't have lied," Hermione said. "And every time I did, I just made it worse. I felt like I couldn't confess because…"

"Tangled webs," Tessa said.

Hermione nodded.

"Have you finally told everything?" Tessa said, sitting back so she could meet her daughter's eyes. 

Hermione gulped. "There's one more thing. It's the biggest, but… there's a magical… geas… that's preventing me saying it."

"Can you write it?"

Hermione took a notebook from her nightstand and wrote "I'm a werewolf" on it. She handed it to her mother.

"Recondite veiled subterfuge," Tessa read. "It's even your handwriting. Is this final secret the reason you want to transfer?"

"The biggest reason, yes."

"This secret would make it more dangerous for you at Hogwarts than you were anyway?"

"Very much so."

"And it involves Harry?"

"How did you know?"

Tessa took Hermione's hand. "You say 'we' a lot when you are talking about this transfer. Is this your secret or Harry's?"

"Ours, equally," Hermione said. 

"Okay, last question for tonight. Do you need to get on birth control before school starts?"

Hermione sat up and stared at her mother. "Wait, _what?_ "

"Fourteen is young for sex, but it's even younger for pregnancy."

"I haven't even _kissed_ a boy since Tom Felton when I was four!"

"Buttercup, I remember being a teenager. It's really easy to go from kissing to snogging to sex because your hormones are not your friends. If you think there'll be any experimentation with Harry - or anyone - this coming school year, you should play it safe."

"Mum… that is just _not_ on my radar any time soon," said Hermione, thinking of how much of her life was consumed with fear of the transformation.

Fear of what might happen when she didn't have her full mind. When Harry didn't have his full mind.

_Maybe…_

"Let me sleep on it," Hermione said. "Can we stop talking about anything serious? Will you read to me?"

Tessa plucked a book from the nearest bookcase. "Will this one do?" It was an old favourite, so Hermione nodded. 

> "It was a dark and stormy night. In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraithlike shadows that raced along the ground…"

* * *

**Thurs Jul 7 1994**   
**Waning Crescent Moon**   
**Hampstead**

Hermione's parents were at work when she finally decided she needed to call for help. She didn't know why she couldn't tell her parents the Secret - was it because they were muggles? Or was it because Harry had to be with her? He was a subject of the secret, and he had been with her all three times she'd disclosed it. So maybe if he was here, then she could say the words. 

She phoned the Happy Hippogriff. The barkeep told her that Sirius and Harry had gone to the Burrow. She had to use Directory Assistance to get the number of the public phone in Ottery St Catchpole. The girl who answered the phone promised her that she'd get someone to take a message to the Burrow, but it might take about an hour to get a response.

It was just under an hour when there was a knock on Hermione's door. Harry and Sirius.

"You came!" she said, hugging Harry fiercely.

"Of course I did!" He seemed offended at her surprise.

"Mum and Dad are at work," Hermione said. "I'm grounded for… well for lying about all the dangerous stuff we did. Come in, and I'll tell you the whole story."

After explaining the problem, Sirius at first congratulated her for deceiving her parents for so long ( _"We'll make a Marauder of you yet…"_ ) and then told her not to worry about it. 

"You just had Romping Rubella as a cover,, right? So if you can't tell the Secret with Harry here, then you tell them that you two caught a variant of Romping Rubella is contagious on the full moon, particularly to muggles, and you need to be quarantined."

Hermione was impressed with his ability to come up with a lie so quickly. "So if I can't tell them about having one incurable disease, I invent an entirely different one?"

"Exactly!" Sirius said.

When Hermione admitted that she couldn't cook, Harry invited himself into the kitchen to make dinner. Carl Granger arrived home first - he ran a simple dental practice with regular hours. Tessa was almost an hour later. She was an oral surgeon who worked out of St Thomas hospital, specialising in cleft lip and palate repair. She had gone to medical school as well as dental school, and earned twice what her dad did. Hermione loved that her dad was never threatened by her mother's genius or her career. 

At dinner, the adults discussed Hogwarts deficiencies. "We already pulled Hermione out," Carl revealed.

"Oh! That's how Dumbledore found out!" Harry said. "I was afraid Lupin had blabbed."

Tessa had a couple of days off next week, so could accompany Hermione to Beauxbatons, along with Sirius and Harry. She was compiling a very long list of questions that she was going to insist on getting answers to, before allowing Hermione to go to another school.

"If we can't find a school before September, I can arrange private tutoring for the two of them. We could have lessons at the Pottery, and she could come home at night," Sirius said.

"I have to admit, that's very appealing. I've missed having my girl at home," Tessa said.

It was after dinner, when Hermione blurted out, "Harry and I were bitten by a werewolf. We have to have a safe place to transform at the full moon."

That's when everyone tried to talk at once. Then shout over everyone at once. 

Sirius's voice finally bellowed over all of them. "No! There's no cure. It's incurable! You think I wouldn't give every knut in my vaults and my wand hand to cure them? But it's _one_ night a month, and the rest of the time she's still your brilliant daughter, so can you go tell her you still love her before she bolts?"

Tessa and Carl turned to look at Hermione, who was sitting on the floor, hugging her knees. Harry was next to her, rubbing circles in her back. 

"Of _course_ we still love you, Buttercup," Carl said. "That never changes. No matter what happens to you."

"We're just scared," Tessa admitted.

"She has to spend the full moons at the Pottery or another safe place. If she transformed in a muggle area, it would be disastrous."

"But couldn't we just lock the doors?"

Hermione gave a bitter chuckle. "Werewolves have enhanced strength. It's started already, even untransformed. I'll probably be able to break down any door in this house."

"Besides, it's not good for them to be locked up alone. They tend to tear at themselves. If she's with me and Harry, we'll be able to run around together."

"Why is it safe for you?" Tessa asked.

Sirius turned into a dog, then back, making Carl swear and Tessa jump to her feet. "You're an animage! Like that Death Eater rat!"

"Animagus, yes," Sirius said. "Werewolves don't attack animals. They hunt humans exclusively. So I will be with Harry and Hermione when they transform. There is also a potion they can take that is supposed to allow them to retain their minds, but not every werewolf can tolerate it. So we're starting them on it this month, and we'll see how it goes."

Tessa sat back down, this time on the floor next to her daughter. "Can I be there? I know not _right_ there, but maybe I can watch through a window? I'm a doctor, if anything goes wrong…"

Sirius crouched down next to the two Granger women. "Let me be honest, Dr Granger. Watching a werewolf transformation is brutal. When I transform into a dog, it's painless. Lycanthropy is a curse - the kids are going to break bones, change shape, grow fur, and it is going to be cruelly painful for them."

"We're dentists," Carl said. "We manage pain for a living."

"Are you thinking the same thing I am?"

"Monitoring is going to be a problem."

"And there's this potion they'll be taking. We don't know how that will respond."

"We can start small, just benzodiazepines at first."

"It isn't really ethical to use one of them as a control, but we'll be violating ethics all over the place doing this."

"Research on our own child. Research without oversight."

"We could both be struck off."

"Worth the risk. It's our Buttercup."

Sirius and Harry were looking a bit lost. "Can someone explain what you're talking about?" Sirius finally asked. Carl and Tessa carried on their back and forth without notice.

"Mum and Dad want to experiment on anaesthetising us during the transformation," Hermione said, who had followed the whole conversation.

"What does struck off mean?" Harry asked.

"It means they'd lose their medical and dental accreditations. They'd no longer be able to practice. Doing experimental research on humans has a lot of special guidelines that they'd be breaking."

"They can't do that!" Harry said, aghast. "Tell them not to!"

"I could maybe convince Dad. But Mum? Once she's decided to do something? It's impossible."

Sirius frowned. "Isn't there a way to do it within the rules?"

Hermione stared at Sirius. "Did _you_ just say that? Mr Padfoot himself?"

"You have to know all of the rules before you can break them artistically."

"It wouldn't be unethical if… they'd need to recruit for the study, not just pick their own kid. They can't even ethically treat me, other than my twice yearly dental exams. They can't prescribe medication to me. They'd need an oversight committee… they're going to need a magical Healer, probably a Potioneer! Oh! I wonder if Damocles Belby would work with them!"

"A Law-witch too, sounds like," Sirius says. "With a muggle counterpart."

Harry leaned on Hermione's shoulder. "The Ministry will never allow it. It'll be tied up in red tape from here to eternity."

"We don't have to do it in this country," Sirius said. "I'm loaded. I can buy a piece of land anywhere. France, if you kids end up there. Canada. Australia. Finland. USA. All those countries are friendlier to werewolves than this country."

"It'd be great to have you close, if we go to Beauxbatons," Harry said.

Tessa and Carl had swept out of the room, still talking rapidly.

"Where did they go?"

"Probably to their study," Hermione said. "They'll be looking at references half the night. I should send you guys home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hermione: So... remember that time I didn't write for six weeks? I was actually in the infirmary.  
> Carl: You were sick?  
> Hermione: Not exactly.  
> Tessa: Injured?  
> Hermione: Petrified.  
> Carl: ...  
> Tessa: ...  
> Hermione: So, then they gave me a potion that--  
> Carl: Petrified?! Like a tree?  
> Hermione: Er... I didn't turn to stone, no.  
> Tessa: So more like paralysis?  
> Hermione: Not really. I wasn't conscious.  
> Carl: A coma. You were in a coma. For weeks.  
> Hermione: *sighing* From the 8th to the 31st of May of last year.  
> Tessa: We should have been there for you! Coma recovery usually isn't instant!  
> Hermione: Harry and Ron came every time they could sneak away. They read to me.  
> Carl: That's nice, but Harry and Ron aren't your parents!!!!
> 
> AN1: French translation by google. Use at your own risk. The History of Beauxbatons
> 
> AN2: Tessa is reading "A Wrinkle in Time" which features a smart but misfit teenage girl heroine fighting the forces of evil to save her family. I can see this being a huge favourite for Hermione as a little girl.
> 
> AN3: Medical research guidelines here (this is what's current, but I don't see any huge changes from what I remember being around in 1994 when I studied science): https://www.gmc-uk.org/-/media/documents/Good_practice_in_research_and_consent_to_research.pdf_58834843.pdf


End file.
